Looking Forward

Today, I am seated at my desk—a sturdy, wooden bedside table/serving tray, with a comfy pillow for me on the floor to sit on—wearing my latest cat-eye reading glasses and drafting this conclusion. It’s August of 2023, and all over this semi-post-pandemic, largely violent, and panic-infused world, fires are burning, hurricanes and tornadoes are abounding, people are homeless and suffering, and the blazing heat outside is melting and evaporating all the cooling ice and water to be found. Like many others, I have felt trapped inside for the past 4+ years, working diligently on this project and grasping for balance between my teaching, writing, and two-dimensional artwork. I have not endured and grieved the way so many others have, graciously. I have almost always worked from home, at least part-time. Quiet, solitude, and a good AC/heating unit create a calm living room, where I sit on the carpeted floor and type at a laptop stationed on a sturdy bedside tray/serving table with small storage slots flanking the desktop. I am seated on a comfortable pillow, looking at my paintings. Throughout the quarantine, I have collected a variety of colors and designs for facemasks, and one that my Mom sent me seemed to suit me the best; I painted a self-portrait wearing it, Self-Portrait with Cat Mask (2020). The mask in the painting is almost solid black with crystal white acrylic paint articulating the upper border, faux-whiskers, and organic lines and shapes of a smiling mouth and nose, both saturated with raspberry-filled pendants. My large, piercing, chocolate-colored eyes reflect a gaze/stare at nothing particularly, and I sport a bobbed haircut and a special-occasion headband. Am I here a “catwoman” (Fig. 8.1)?