Anna Pichuhina

It was due to a long period of depression. Thus, lockdown, paradoxically, became for me a mechanism for rapprochement with people. After all, my habitual views on the world became more clear for my acquaintance only in quarantine. I have never gone beyond my personal experience in my art and all my statements based on individual associations. But now I understand that it can be interesting for a wide range of people. Strangely enough, my experience of the lockdown period is positive.

In March 2020, my husband and I lost our steady jobs due to the pandemic. It made me put my creativity to Instagram and looking for opportunities to monetize my work. I joined the Artist Support Pledge initiative. Thanks to that enterprise, I was able to sell two paintings and several sketches. Thus, we were able to survive during the two months of a strict lockdown. It was my first sense of being a full-time artist. Up to this point, I was in a vicious circle where a steady job did not leave time and inner resources for creativity and its promotion. I always had to sacrifice my art activity for survival.

During the quarantine period, I had time to finish the projects started a long time ago. I was able to regain some order to my thoughts and put together a lot of disparate works. Notably, I finished my Herbal Heaven series, which has opened up from a new side due to quarantine.

I know that for many people, quarantine has become an entirely negative experience. However, it has helped me a lot in my research on the demarcation of the internal and the external.

In my artworks, I tried to convey a detached and seeing everything from the outside, as when I have to look out the window, instead of taking a stroll. I also wanted to capture that strange feeling of wrongness, which engulfed a person when he first sees his city empty and abandoned.

«Rain» is an abstraction on plastic sheeting and mosquito netting. Its issue is a sense of blockage. The rain is intrusive. It is something going to intrude into your life against your will. It is water that does not purify. It makes the road turn into the mud, and clay covers your shoes, your clothes stuck to your body. You know there is nowhere for you to go, trapped on all sides.