When I considered the theme of this exhibition what felt most relevant was considering what in my practice has been worked on when I was younger but have come back to, and what I work on in little snippets of time. I’ve recently come to back to collage, and over the past several months I find myself working on them here and there. I give myself small goals at work, and then work on collages for a few moments. Oddly, at work is sometimes when I have more time to create Art as my 3 year old has left little time for creation. I feel like that might be changing as we have begun to work on scissors skills and I hope that sometime soon he and I will be building these collages together.

Star Child

Through a Window D

Through a Window C

Playground

Once

Karen Mundi

Infinite Skies

Families 3

Families 2

Families 1

Country Fair

Can We Play Through

Through a Window B

Through a Window A

Dollhouse

All We Lose

When I began this project, I asked my community to provide me with images that represented themselves and how they felt they were coping with the pandemic. The original photographs were representative of their own view, however naturally as I interpreted and painted the image I applied my own gaze to these women. How did I see them? How did they fit into my life? What were they dealing with that they had shared with me. One was the sole breadwinner of a family of 5 after her husband lost his job due to the pandemic; she was worn out, touched out, but always there for a support. Another was unemployed and in the wrong country as she had brought her children to visit their father on the other side of the planet and got stuck by restrictions, but she was also the woman who guided me through breastfeeding my son. Lastly, and the most important of all is the woman who cares for my son while I’m at work, a mother herself who has not seen her children for over a year and half at that point, she was falling apart. Despite how drawn out they felt, each of these women was also saintly, so in the Orthodox tradition that I grew up with I filled the background in gold. All of us who are coping with the world in these trying times, are worthy of saint like status.

Pieced Together KAL

Pieced Together ESM 

When I fell in love with Art, I fell in love with portraiture. Regardless of the time period, I found myself drawn to faces I did not know and wanted to try to understand. An odd thing for someone raised on the influence of the Group of Seven. In my own art I have attempted to look at the experience of those I know well and capture the beauty they possess through all the uncertainty in their lives. Whether that uncertainty is parenthood, the pandemic, or the every day difficulties of living. However despite my love for the forests and lakes of home I have never put the two together before. This series finally brought together these two different forms of painting: portraiture and landscape. They started as zoom dates with friends, but they turned into stories of longing for the homes they left behind. Longing for Scottish highlands, the Lake Country, and English gardens. This homesickness has been exasperated by the pandemic as we feel trapped in our current desert homes, trapped behind our computer screens, but long for green fields of home.

Through a Screen Yasmine

Through a Screen Saiqah

There is a lot of talk about the loss of childhood. Children attached to their screens or their mother’s aprons strings. Apparently we cannot let our children roam free any longer. We can’t trust them, or neighbours, that the kids will come in when the street lights turn on. But, I don’t believe that has to be the case. The moments in my own childhood of freedom from parents to wander outside as child were frequent, but so incredibly memorable; both for the joy and the danger. I am lucky enough as an adult to live in a neighbourhood where my son can wander. The street lights might flicker, but his friends of varying ages keep an eye on him and make sure he is in for dinner. He has freedom and adventure, bullying and joy, laughter and tears. All these moments though are fleeting, blink and you miss them. The frantic energy of a 4 year old dictates the pace. I have been trying with this work to capture the moments of play. You might just catch them in your peripheral vision, they may be blurry, or show sudden movements. It is a juxtaposition of energy and stillness, of being in the moment and missing it, that I hope to capture in these images of play.

Triplicate

Streetlights

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Elena T Smyrniotis