I started painting this work in progress for a class, to illustrate a certain technique with water-based media. But this painting also epitomizes the predominate lesson we are now learning globally: the lesson of the inhumanity of distancing.
For many reasons, including technology and politics, we have become ensiloed individuals. We live in our own personal echo chambers and derive an illusory sense of security. When we are not at ease living among people, including those who are different from us, the inhumanity of distancing can happen. It can happen very subtly.
The inhumanity of distancing separates us from other people. Such distancing creates anxiety and fear. In our fear and culturally-driven fragmentation, we may begin to view other people as different, and perhaps undesirable. We may even start to view other people as not fully human.
How can this be? How can it be changed? Where are our opportunities to draw closer, to break bread, to get to know one another in all our imperfections?