Pandemic Paintings
Anything but ennui!
My Geriatric Journal #18
Don’t fret, dear journal, because I have been neglecting you — the hurricanes, earthquakes, rioting in the streets of San Juan and a global pandemic have been keeping me somewhat distracted. I know you may have noticed I haven’t wandered out of the gates of Villa Flores in nearly five months but you must know I have kept busy inside these jungle walls.
One thing I have been doing is painting. If you expect interpretations of the chaos and entropy into which the world is plummeting, you will be disappointed. I see only beauty. At the top of this post is the first example. I painted it on my very last canvas — the shops are closed for the duration of the Covid 18 shutdown. The subject is a stylized trio of torch gingers. I had the challenge of making them appear to glow without overdoing it.
With no canvases, I then took on the seven rescued cabinet doors that Hurricane Maria tore from our north terrace. Each is 3/4" plywood and weigh between 11 and 15 pounds, so my set was not painted en plein air — unless the fact I painted them on the same terrace counts. There were no real models before me, also, just my memories of the countless things I have seen and photographed on the property.
