In 2020 the 19th strand of the Coronavirus swept the earth.

At first, during the early days of full lockdown, the atmosphere was one of disbelief. Slowly reality dawned upon us and lead to a whole range of emotions. At first almost everything was bad and bleak and negative. People were angry at the Government, at the world, at each other and I think, sometimes even themselves, for no reason.

As time dragged on, the introverts loved the isolation, being alone and not having to socialise. (Well, after a few months of isolation, my introvert friends were reluctantly admitting to actually missing interaction with people – enough isolation was enough isolation!) On the other hand, the extroverts, like myself, who get energy from people and interaction, grew steadily more depressed. And I am not even prone to depression or even feeling “down”! I wanted people and hugs and social interaction. I longed for my family and friends. I needed to sit with my granddaughter Nina in my studio, painting or blogging while she is happily producing her little masterpieces. I wanted to restart my weekly art classes. Once the schools partially reopened I learned about the nearly unsurmountable problems regarding protocols with teenagers believing that they were untouchable as well as stressed out and unhappy staff members and I was thankful that my formal teaching years were behind me.

Spending a lot of time on my cell phone with family and friends, I heard rumours of a site called Kraftemporium and made it my business to find out what it was about. I loved the idea, since I was producing paintings at a hysterical rate. This is the thing: some people binged watched TV and baked banana bread (which I gladly ate when offered some). My coping mechanism was to paint frantically. To me it felt as if this was the only way to preserve some semblance of sanity.
As weeks become months and eventually a large part of this troubled year, good things were also slowly happening. I was invited to present video art classes for a large group of people. This was new to me, always preferring personal contact, and I had to make decisions on things I never needed to before.

One of the funny scenarios was my very sophisticated recording system. At first my husband recorded the class on camera. This resulted in enough data for a short film, impossible to upload as a whole. I got a new plan: my husband now recorded short bursts on a cell phone. Needless to say, he got a bit bored with this after about the tenth video. An even better plan emerged: I stuck a selfie stick into a flower pot filled with marbles for stabilisation purposes and positioned it over my hands and the paper for my demonstrations. Another plus was that nobody saw my face anymore, so I could do my little thing without hair and make-up done. I posted these alongside text and still photos.

Thank you Duif Art Centre for this opportunity!”

The plans for Kraftemporium was also growing, I heard.  The concept of Kraftemporium came just in time: I completed at least a painting a day. The majority thereof is miniature paintings. There are various definitions of miniature paintings: during the time of King Henry VIII, they were done as portraits set in pendants and originally the criterion was that it was to be no bigger than a person’s hand palm.
This being said, the modern take on miniature paintings is that it must possible to be hand-held. (There are the purists and several miniature art associations around the world, which is also good.) Most artists do them as preliminary sketches for large paintings, in any medium.
I have always loved working in a variation of size and format. However, during lockdown I worked mainly in A6, A5 and A4. The reason for this is that I did a painting a day and would otherwise not have been able to make time for making my bed! As it is, if I have to choose between painting and making my bed, painting will always win!

Several art friends and groups that I belong to, had organised drives during lockdown. Taking part in two or three of those at a time, miniatures were the way to go!

Personally I cannot wait for Kraftemporium to be finally launched so that so very many people can have a vehicle for selling the fruit of their creativity, mode of escapism, and hard work – hopefully done with joy. And now, just when we began to relax, the second wave of THE VIRUS is upon us. I believe that God will sweep this virus from the earth. My prayer is that, in the meantime, people will have more empathy with one another, that they will treat one another with a gentler hand.

I hope that we have learnt enough during this year to know how to sustain what little we have: relationships, earth, stuff to keep us busy with, that those who have an income be thankful and work hard.
AND MAKE ART!

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