Art During a Pandemic

This is probably a weird time in history to be creating a website and starting a blog. But the facts are that I've been planning to create a website for awhile and I've always wanted to start a blog -- so this is the ideal time for me.

Before COVID 19 arrived and changed all our lives, I was a member of two groups of artists who met weekly to paint together -- the Tuesday Painters and the Clarkson Society of Artists. Outside of these two painting days, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, life and laziness kept me from painting as much as I should have been. After a couple of weeks of boredom and general confusion about the pandemic, my artist friends and I have come up with some creative ideas to get us off the couch, keep us painting and also to maintain the social contact that we are missing so much.

The Tuesday Painters each paint their interpretation of an image supplied by one of the members. Bi-weekly, on Tuesdays of course, they each send me an unsigned photo of their painting and I assign a number to each. I then send them all to to the entire group, and we try to match each painting to the artist. This is fun, not to be taken seriously, and we are challenged to paint subjects we might not have chosen on our own.

The Executive of the Clarkson Society of Artists have had several ZOOM meetings to discuss and plan for the future of our group while we are unable to have our regular meetings. We are having a website built, where we will be hosting a Virtual Art Show in the fall This idea was originally planned to replace our annual show which had to be cancelled in April, but will be an ongoing site.

More recently, as the COVID restrictions are easing, four friends from the Tuesday Painters have been meeting at the home of one of our artists (on Tuesdays) -- actually we meet and paint in a huge screened in porch where we can social distance and enjoy ourselves. This has all the benefits of plein air painting without the bugs.

So, "La la la la Life goes on". I hope everyone is managing to find ways to enjoy what they love during these difficult days.