Quarantine at Averill Park
“Quarantine at Averill Park” tells the story of my family’s experience sheltering-in place in upstate New York at the beginning of the pandemic. The series consists of 8 triptychs (twenty-four 40 x 30 inch oil paintings).
While making these paintings, I was studying the works of Frans Hals and Georges de La Tour, and I became fascinated with contemporary artists, both visual and musical, who found ways of infusing funky elements into 17th century art. The film composer Michael Nyman does this brilliantly in refashioning Henry Purcell melodies with dissonant sounds and unusual cadence, as does Nyman’s collaborator-director Peter Greenaway in transposing the look of old Dutch paintings into weirdly modern dystopian contexts.
"Quarantine at Averill Park" is also a character study of the three individuals I was holed up with in a remote cabin in upstate New York, isolated from the rest of the world, and at times even each other, who eventually came together and to terms with our new circumstances.
Still from “My progress as a painter”