Quarantine Portrait
By Emily Toomey | November 12, 2020
Although I almost always paint in oils, during quarantine I had the strange urge to use watercolors for the first time in more than eight years. With all of the noise and stress in the world, switching to a new medium gave me a sense of calm and focus that I really needed. Quarantine Portrait is one of a handful of watercolor portraits I made when lockdown first started back in March. My partner drove up from DC to Boston to stay with me for what we thought would be a week, but what turned into more than two months. I wanted to capture the experience of looking out at the world and having the conflicting feelings of claustrophobia and safety. From a technical standpoint, it was also an opportunity to play with reflections and the effects of light passing through a grating.
Emily Toomey, “Quarantine Portrait”, watercolor on paper, 8″x6″ 2020
Copyright © 2020 Emily Toomey
Toomey is an oil painter who focuses primarily on portraiture and figurative studies. She also is an electrical engineer who recently completed her PhD from MIT. She currently resides in Washington DC (and is looking for recommendations of local art communities to get involved in!).