True Art in Quarantine
By Logan Riley
The streets were empty and the neon stopped hissing and shining.
Las Vegas was still, holding its breath for the first time since…since can be remembered.
Inspiration had seemingly flown the coop along with the magicians and showgirls and gamblers, spilled drinks, and cigarette carpets.
You’d think it would be hard, creating in a newly minted wasteland of entertainment.
I started off in the early days of the pandemic running an art special, taking commissions then parsing out the profit to other artists and people who were hit the hardest. I felt great, a minor savior of humanity. The light of hope and humanity shone brighter and brighter with each commission and each note of gratitude from a stranger I helped.
As great as helping felt, my own light started to darken inside.
I was happy to be helping, but painting the same things for people – capturing happy moments or pets or grandparents – I couldn’t maintain it. My light fizzled, and I was burnt out.
I’m a rather private person. I paint late at night, with the feeling that I’m the only one awake in the world. I go on late night walks, feeling like the king of the streets. Isolated, silent, just paint and music. Which got to be a pretty heavy feeling when even the choice of going out, of having a face to face conversation, was made obsolete in March.
The funny thing is, I struggled writing this piece. I even lost my first draft to the computer afterlife after failing to save it properly. Looking back at that brief moment in time, where over a thousand forced words just disappeared and all I was left with was the first paragraph I had written, all of those words I struggled for just gone, I felt a kind of forward moving freedom. Like the universe was telling me “that’s not what you wanted to say, try again, and be real this time.”
So the truth.
Being an artist during the pandemic has not been easy, even though I told many people that it was in the beginning.
I hid my emotions, my anxieties, my annoyance of having to do commissions that were not inspiring to me. I felt my progress as an artist slipping backwards, circling the drain as I painted people who were not my family and friends or dogs and cats I would never get to scratch behind the ears. I dwindled, my light dimmed, and I didn’t want to paint anymore. Which, as far as being an artist, that’s not a productive way to be.
In order to break out of the slump I needed to paint something true, something real, something that reflected myself and what was going on beneath the surface. I needed to paint what was happening under my own mask of indifference.
That’s when my mask series was born.
Burn All The Pretty Things. Original art/Logan Riley.
It started with a boy, alone in a room, lighting matches and burning paper origami cranes and wearing a fox mask. I titled it Burn All The Pretty Things as a response to how I had been feeling towards art.
What surprised me, this picture that portrayed my isolation, my need to create and destroy all at once, resonated with people. I let my own mask slip and found comradery in collective isolation, collective anxiety, collective frustration, and loss.
But Who Will Sing The Moon a Lullaby?
The next painting was titled But Who Will Sing The Moon a Lullaby? depicting a moon-masked boy separated from a crow-masked girl communicating through two soup cans on a string. I realized I needed to be honest with my communication. I needed to tell people how I really was feeling. The bold, aloof artist not affected by the real world was a daunting persona that just wasn’t true.
I reached out to friends and found that they too were struggling, especially my creative friends. What do you do during these times? Do you continue to create and push your creative children into the world? At the risk of being deemed irresponsible, or ignoring what was going on, the answer is always yes.
The world needs beauty and art and for artists of all walks of life to communicate.
We communicate and emote through stories and pictures and music and when things are in upheaval is exactly the time to share art.
Protect Love.
The last mask painting I finished was in response to the protests and police violence, depicted a Black girl wearing a lion mask protecting her stuffed lion. I didn’t know what to do, how to really show my support, how to make sense out of injustice and the pride I felt knowing fellow humans were putting themselves at risk to try and change a broken system.
I wanted to protect everyone. I wanted communities to know that they have allies and didn’t always need to be their own protectors – which, I admit, is rosy-glassed thinking, but that’s where I hope things start heading.
All of these masks were really just projections of how I truly felt at a time when I was trying to cover it up, because ultimately, when we are all stuck at home, we do feel alone and isolated and forget that everyone else is stuck at home feeling the same things we are.
I remembered the importance of what art can convey emotionally and culturally and how all of us need a way to freely and fully express ourselves because doing so will allow others to feel that they can do it as well, or, at the very least, let them know they aren’t alone.
As an artist during the pandemic, slipping backwards, then pushing forwards, I want YOU to know you are not alone and it is okay to let your mask slip (your symbolic mask, at least) and be your true self, express your true self, and just be. Be you. Be you in each and every moment and know you are not, and never have been, alone.
Logan Riley was born in the mountains, moved to the South, got educated Down Under, survived the Big Apple, and now lives in Sin City as an artist.
You can find more of his art at: https://www.theartofloganriley.com/
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