James Gouldthorpe

I was spinning out after two weeks of feeling dread due to uncertainty of the future.  No one understood the potential lethality of the virus, my job was in jeopardy, and my recent college graduate son was struggling and full of despair. I was attempting to work in the studio on pre-Covid paintings but finding it difficult to settle and focus. After our first pandemic trip the grocery store, and, after spending an hour wiping every purchase down with disinfectant I began to consider our new world.  What previous innocuous objects have suddenly become heavy with Corona baggage. A bag of groceries is now a vector for potential death.  So I painted the groceries, an artifact of our new fear.  Then each day in order to find some stable ground, I painted a new artifact, masks, swabs what ever was suddenly filling the news.  As the pandemic progressed and layers of social dysfunction revealed itself I attempted to represent it in a painting, trying not to editorialize, just to document.  Here in the US, the incompetency and lack of leadership concerning the pandemic and the civil unrests that evolved out of it became subject matter. Initially I added occasional humor to my pieces, but that seems more difficult as time passes.  I have no idea how long I can continue, though I am finding it necessary for my own state of mind to keep painting and build an archive of this time.

— James Gouldthorpe