The Quarantine Series by Sam Marks Solo Exhibition

While life during a pandemic felt precarious, one thing was certain: each day I sat down and scratched ink into painted pieces of wood. The Quarantine Series confronts the anxiety, isolation, and uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. To represent our collective anxiety and my personal experience with it, I painted acrylic onto salvaged plywood in a gestural, expressive, and intuitive process. I then drew an intricate and overlapping grid on the dried paint. The grid, in effect, makes the artistic decisions in advance, so the only task each day was to sit down, dip into ink, and draw lines. The thousands of lines I drew every day tally the passage of time and are a growing record of my ongoing efforts to manage my anxiety and uncertainty during the lockdowns. With each piece named after the month of the pandemic in which it was created, The Quarantine Series chronicles the ever-changing landscape of anxiety. The daily ritual of focusing narrowly on the next line I drew allowed me to control what I can control and appreciate the things that are certain.

*Photo credit: John Janca