ISOLATION: 100 Days of Landscape Painting Exhibition
On display July 17th-August 8th, 2020
ISOLATION: 100 Days of Landscape Painting Exhibition is an ongoing series of landscape paintings created as a practice of reflection and self-care in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The series began as Kelsey King, along with the community, started to understand the severity of the outbreak and entered stay-at-home orders and remote teaching practices. This drastic change in environment, left Kelsey feeling detached and isolated from her personal, professional, and artistic community.
Kelsey King has created an acrylic and oil painting every day since lockdown (March 15th) and has currently created over 120 original works. All of the paintings feature various landscapes such as local public land, Northern Minnesota and the Boundary Waters, MN State Parks, Norway, Iceland and other spaces.
“These paintings started as a daily routine that served to distract me from constant scrolling and news updates and focus my energy on something that brought me joy. They became, as days at home grew longer and the full scale of the magnitude of the crisis settled in, a form of reflection upon my experience with isolation. These landscapes- sometimes vast, sometimes intimate, but always empty with no signs of human life - are all moments in my life where I have turned to nature to find excitement, awe, and feel connected to the larger world around me. At these times, being isolated doesn’t feel like pulling away but a chance to appreciate connections in a different way than I do during times of normalcy.” - Kelsey King
