Birthday Selfie, (Covid) Mary and Child, Covid Coronation (Medical Monarch), and Doing Shots

Exhibit Label: As a full-time painter living and working in downtown Washington DC, I have always painted current events and reacted to the world around me. As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic became front page news in 2020, I began creating virus-themed work from my downtown studio. I created close to 100 unique paintings that documented the constantly mutating “facts" surrounding this once in a lifetime global phenomenon. I created this body of work to express my feelings throughout the entire first two years of the pandemic. I created the first work in the series just days after the first glimmer of news about a possible 'public health' warning was issued, before it was even declared a pandemic. I have always been one to dive deep to find out all the information that the news glosses over or leaves out completely, so I painted each of the works as reactions to the ever-morphing news cycles, and constantly changing public health recommendations. --Label design by exhibit curator Nancy DeJoy. Labels written by Ben Lash and his team in consultation with artist statements.