SUSPENDED ANIMATION
The first thing you’ll notice when you see this image is that there’s no apparent horizon. Nor is there any real reference to the water. There are no boats, birds, canoes or even waves or current evident. The islands are just “hanging” there.
I painted this image with over 100 days of isolation behind us in the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020. As an artist I was searching for a painting, my painting, that would speak of what I’m feeling, and probably what a lot of folks are feeling these days. And I found the image that would make that statement while sitting on Gospel Rock, overlooking the Salish Sea, here in Gibsons. The setting sun was defining the islands. But those islands, so close, were really inaccessible to me.
You see the quarantine and isolation has changed life for all of us. For over 20 years I’ve paddled in and around these waters in big canoes with crews varying from 4 to over 20 people. I’ve done that canoe paddling almost every week of every year for all that time. And now, in one day, it was taken from me. It has changed my way of life. It has left a hole. So those islands, so close, are a mere apparition until this is all over. Those big canoes, and all the energy they bring, lay dormant in our Paddle Club compound. And those waters will not know of those canoes again until Covid-19 passes.
And it’s the very same for all of us. We all find our lives filled with “Don’t’s” in these times. Don’t travel, don’t stand too close, don’t shake hands, don’t hug, don’t forget to wash your hands, don’t touch your face. Don’t, don’t, don’t. And all the while we’re home in the seemingly endless bonds of imposed isolation. We tolerate with a smile, but deep within there’s turmoil and stress. We all feel it. Some just don’t admit it. Life as we knew it is like those islands in my painting. They’re out there, we can see them, but we can’t be there right now. It’s seems that the “normal” life we knew and we hope to get back to one day, is in some sort of suspended animation. And the longer we go without returning to “normal” the less detail we’ll remember about what “normal” really is. And so, my painting has no detail other than those islands. The islands I hope to return to one day in our big canoes.
The best I can do right now is to sit on Gospel Rock as the evening sun paints its impressive colours on those islands. All I can do is dream of that “normal” day again when we can paddle among the islands in our big canoes. For me it’s those islands. For you, it’s your individual goals, hopes and aspirations. Until this is all over, all of us find ourselves, like the islands in my painting, in “SUSPENDED ANIMATION”.
