Multiverses

The concept of alternative universes has taken on new significance for me during the pandemic and the years of social and political upheaval that have followed. During COVID, I was haunted by the sense that my life had suddenly veered off course. I tried to give my isolated toddler a normal childhood. But I was keenly aware of all that she was missing out on, and aware also of terrifying events in the larger world.

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Walking around my neighborhood and the adjoining woods, I began taking photographs of fallen leaves, frozen ice, and rippling puddles. Then, back in my studio, I painted canvases with fierce colors and strokes, then photographed those paintings. In Photoshop, I combined my photographs of nature and of my paintings, creating fantastical layer upon layer. The final step, digital drawing, involved scraping away one layer to reveal the other underneath. Multiple layers formed different universes, one visible through the cracks in another. In the resulting compositions, I recognised the friction between a personal landscape that was deep with grief and the vibrancy of the imagined life I missed.

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I’ve continued to work on this series since. The pandemic has ended but the chaos of the world seems only to have increased. I continue to feel the dissonance between what is and what could be, and it is too vast. But then, in Multiverses, I see my own fractured consciousness reflected, and for a moment, to visualize it is enough. I can see my own life and the larger world as it is now, while still touching back to the hopes of the past, and still imagining something different.