CREATIVE ISOLATION
We’re checking in with a different Saskatchewan artist each week to talk about their life and work during COVID-19. This week, we hear from portrait artist Carol Wylie, whose recent work has earned her acclaim across Canada. She’s started a new project: Painting portraits of people in masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Q What does your life look like right now, literally and figuratively?
A Just being in the house so much of the time. I’ve got a little office for work (at the Remai Modern) downstairs in the basement, so I always make the joke to my partner when I’m leaving, “I’m going to work now,” and I go downstairs, and when I come up at the end of the day I say, “I’m home, honey.” But I’m trying to keep some semblance of normal — getting up and showering in the morning, having my breakfast, reading the paper, and then going down to work.
And then my art practice has always been a weekend and days-off practice, so when I’m not working for the museum I’m at my studio. It’s a shared studio space, but every other artist has decided that they’re not comfortable being there right now because of social distancing. So I’ve been going — my house is tiny, I have no place to work here, and if nobody else is there I’m isolated while I’m there.
Q Tell me about your new portrait project that’s popped up during the pandemic.
A Just watching my Facebook feed, there’s so many people that were posting pictures of themselves in masks … and there’s all these really colourful homemade masks that are being made. And I thought as a portrait artist, this could be really challenging to do a portrait where you’re really only seeing a portion of the face, and also kind of document this strange time. So I decided to do this whole series of very small — they’re just 10-inch by 10-inch — portraits of people in their masks. Just asking them to send me selfies, so I don’t have to meet up with anybody, which is normally a part of my process, but that can’t happen now.
Most of the people that have submitted so far I know anyway … and I’m just painting these with the idea that I’m going to continue to paint them as long as people submit images and as long as this goes on, because I feel like this is sort of a counter, an endurance challenge for my practice that runs parallel to the endurance challenge that we’re all doing right now. I sort of envision them all kind of being one big piece, at the end.
Q How much time has gone into this new project?
A I only started it a couple weeks ago, and I’m just about finished my third one. I’m part-time at the studio, so it usually takes me a couple of days to finish one. But they’re tricky, because so much of the face is missing, and some of the masks have quite intricate little designs on them and I’m not used to doing a lot of pattern painting — so it’s some new challenges.
And because they’re so small — I’ll often work quite large, and when you’re done a painting you’ve sort of got this big painting that has some kind of impact right off the bat. But these are tiny, so I think the impact is going to come from gathering them all together … and it’s such a metaphorical way to talk about how even though we’re separated, it’s all of us working together that’s battling with this pandemic, too.
Q As a portrait artist, how has isolation changed the way you work creatively?
A With the practice, because
I’m a portrait artist, part of the process of painting a portrait has always been spending time sitting with the person first. Whether it be somebody that’s part of a project or somebody that’s commissioned a piece, the starting point is almost always “come to my studio, sit, we’ll talk, I’ll sketch,” and then take photos at the end, so I’ll actually have this sort of memory and process of spending time with that person and being in their energy and having an interconnectedness that informs the painting.
So that’s out the window. That’s something that I cannot do right now … I’m feeling my way through that.
A big part of why I’m a portrait artist is because there’s something about the face and facial features and what they express that I just find deeply and endlessly fascinating, I just can’t seem to get enough of it.
So I find there’s a frustration in this, because so much of that is covered up, and it’s all sort of in the eyes and in the forehead and the only area that we can see that has to present itself.
So I am learning to let go of being frustrated over the lack of information that I’m seeing and just to go with what’s there ... and I really appreciate, also, this has sort of highlighted the partnering that happens as a portrait artist. Unless I do self-portraits my entire career, I don’t work alone … it always astounds me that people are so generous.
Q What sort of media have you been consuming in isolation?
A We’ve been doing the Netflix kinds of series, we just finished Devs, it’s kind of an interesting sci-fi thing, it’s quite interesting, around understanding whether or not there’s a way with quantum theory to be able to see the past and the future based on cause and effect, it’s quite an interesting series. I always watch The Daily Show every day, I really enjoy Trevor Noah’s brand of humour … I just finished reading his book, too, called Born a Crime, about his life in South Africa as a child.
Sometimes I’ll read to my granddaughter on Facetime, we’re going through the Harry Potter series. She’s eight, and we’re just about through the first book … I’m an actor, I’m doing all the accents and things for her, so she’s just thrilled with that. She’s so funny — she’s eight years old and she’ll sit there knitting, because her school taught them how to knit. So she’ll sit there and knit while I read from the book.
Wylie is accepting photos for her COVID-19 portrait project through her website.