I’ve been locked down for more than 40 days today and my moods have been shifting since this started. Even though I’m talking with friends and family, I wanted to know how some of the artists that I admire are dealing with this crisis. So I sent them 5 questions to check how they’re doing and to see if reading how they’re are navigating this weird times help the rest of us to cope with our own situations. To avoid being the one who enjoys what the rest of the artists share without sharing my situation, I decided to be the first to answer to the questions… it’s seemed a fair thing to do.
TWS – How are you doing in this Covid-19 pandemic?
M– Now I’m doing great. But unluckily in mid march I got the virus and spent 2 shitty weeks. It wasn’t hell, but it wasn’t nice either. But now everything is ok and I’m happy to be ok again. My family and close friends are doing ok, so that helps a lot to keep the moods up.
TWS –Are you being able to telecommute / work from home?
M–Yes. I can do it without any major issue. I work from home a lot too, so it didn’t meant a big leap into something new or unknown. I know how to be at home without procrastinating wildly. My partner and kid are all day at home, and that was a challenge, but we managed to find our own spaces and live 24/7 together without any major family crisis.
TWS –Did the lock-down affected your creativity and art making? How?
M–Yes, definitely. When I recovered from the pneumonia and fever, I felt I was empty and hadn’t got anything to put into my art. Didn’t even felt the need to express anything. I just wanted to play Scrabble online and not think about nothing in particular. After some days, I started working and that helped me to reconnect with my art. But when I tried to make stuff, it was really dark and abstract and I didn’t felt I wanted to keep going into that direction. Making my art right now is a struggle that I don’t know how to face, so I’m just not doing it right now. Now I’m focusing on my commercial work and I used quite a lot of time to make other things like playing guitar and making stuff for this site.
TWS –Are you able to track positive moments or things that happened during this crisis so far?
M–Quite a few positive things that happened during these days: Recovering from the virus was a big one. All the love and support I got while ill was also amazing and really moving. All the time to spend with my family was another really cool one. Alone this would have been much more difficult. Here we had lots of moments of laugh (among others of drama, as its quite obvious). The list continues: I made three cool online collage workshops, one of them with kids which was amazing. I ordered my studio and now looks amazing. I recorded the guitars of a couple of songs that sound quite nice. Also for the first time in my life I grew a beard, but I didn’t like it and now I’m back to normal.
TWS –What’s the first thing you would like to do when we can get back to normal?
M–I’d love to make a huge barbecue with friends. I’m looking forward to this moment a lot.
