I Used Art To Create A Highly-Opinionated History Of 2020–a Year Of Sadness, Madness And Courage

It all began back in March in the first dark days of the pandemic. A friend of mine was losing her mind. To calm her down, I drew two hands with the tagline “Handwashing not Hand Wringing!” and texted it to her. I posted the drawing on social media. People responded. So I made another image. Then another. It seemed that the art I was making struck a chord. I’d taken a hiatus from art for several years to write books and articles and run workshops, but the pandemic was everywhere—out there in the world and inside your head—and ideas for images, cartoons and visual metaphors invaded my mind. We were living through mythological times—illness, death, lockdowns, economic collapse, George Floyd’s murder, mass protests, madness in the White House and a presidential election. And the news? It was toxic—rumors, political pontificating, propaganda, scandals, contradictions and outright lies.

That kind of hysteria is not what people need in troubled times. I got into the daily habit of tuning into a special frequency. It’s the "what-people-need-to-hear" frequency. Depending on what was going on in the world, sometimes it seemed that people needed the comfort of knowing they weren’t alone in their despair. Other times they needed to lighten up and laugh at the absurdity of pandemical life. And on some days to get mad, really mad.

Maybe the best role model for me is Mathew Brady, a phenomenally successful NYC portrait photographer, who was inspired by the drama and violence of the Civil War to pick up his photo studio and move it out to the battlefields, taking thousands of photos of war, survival and death. "I had to go," explained Brady. "A spirit in my feet said 'Go,' and I went."

(Disclaimer: I’m a blue-state progressive, so if you love Trump you may take issue with some of the images in this post)