‘It was an incredible experience’
Michelle MacKinnon’s book features images of life during the pandemic
For someone whose focus is to create, not being able to do so during the COVID-19 pandemic hit Corner Brook artist Michelle MacKinnon kind of hard.
As she found her way back to creating, MacKinnon also discovered a way of documenting how the pandemic affected other artists through a series of portraits that are now contained in her selfpublished book, “Pandemic Portraits.”
MacKinnon teaches drawing and painting at Grenfell Campus and was working on a project about the idea of what is home as part of a residency at the Grenfell Art Gallery when the pandemic started in March 2020.
For the Ontario native, the idea for her was what is home in a state of transience.
“I looked at that in terms of looking at home through things and objects that brought me comfort.”
That idea came through in very large drawings of knit items.
Unable to go into the university to get her things, MacKinnon couldn’t continue working on the project.
“I was really focused on online teaching for the first couple of months ... I wanted to continue to make art, but I felt like I had nothing to do because everything was all locked away. And, you know what, on top of that I felt exhausted, and it was the pandemic, and we were all stressed, and I didn’t really want to do anything.”
Then one morning she pulled out a watercolour set.
She started on a self-portrait with a plan to complete it in three hours. She went on to do a few more and an idea started to build.
“To continue working on these little portraits as kind of a way to have a bit of a quiet, little mindful yet mindless rest for my brain to stop thinking about the pandemic and to do something more relaxing,” she said.
Then she did one of her partner, Andrew Testa, another local artist and educator, and asked her friend and fellow artist, Larry Weyand, to send her a selfie in their pandemic state and a statement on something they’d done over the pandemic. It didn’t matter how mundane it was, just something that was personally significant to them.
The next day, she contacted artist Jane Walker and asked her the same, and then Lucas Morneau.
MacKinnon started thinking of her pandemic portraits project in terms of art folk in the province and how they were affected so uniquely by the pandemic.
“Because we had all of this pressure to all of a sudden be super productive because you’re at home, you have time for your practice, you can make stuff.”
Simultaneously, she said, they were hearing they should relax and use the downtime for self-care.
MacKinnon started posting the portraits on Instagram and even went live to work on them.
Local Mi’kmaw bead artist Alex Antle had been following the project on Instagram when MacKinnon asked her to participate.
“I thought it was so amazing and I was finding all these new local artists that I didn’t already know about, so it was kind of like a little local artist directory that was pointing me to all these new artists,” said Antle.
MacKinnon was open to whatever type of picture Antle wanted to send.
“But I guess to be kind of authentic to the project, I was like, ‘You know what, this is my state right now. I’m just sitting down, drinking iced coffee, working from home at my desk,’ so I just took a selfie then and there.”
Antle thought the finished portrait was amazing.
“Michelle is so talented, that’s crazy that she could make something that looks so much like me,” she said.
“I was so excited to be involved in the project and have a picture like that of myself when I’ve seen so many of all these other artists that I look up to,” said Antle.
Soon MacKinnon had 140 portraits. She exhibited them at The Rooms in St. John’s and at the Grenfell Art Gallery.
As the province was on the mend from the third wave of the pandemic around mid2021, MacKinnon’s thought turned to where the project fit outside of the pandemic.
She wanted to continue to display but didn’t want to keep exhibiting them. Out of that came the idea for the book.
After a lot of work, and some financial help from ArtsNL and the Grenfell Art Gallery, MacKinnon had 300 copies of “Pandemic Portraits” printed and held a release of the book at the Grenfell gallery earlier this month.
“It was an incredible experience to be able to create a book. I guess that’s something that I never really expected to do. Also, it feels like a really neat way to kind of capsulate this very strange and unprecedented time that we all went through,” said MacKinnon.
There are only 20 copies left of the limited edition run. Each book is numbered and signed, and MacKinnon is not sure if she will have any more printed.
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