You’re On Mute

This Zoom Portrait was painted in early December, with frost on the ground and condensation on the windows. There is an opacity to the screen through which we view the pair. They are receding and crystallising, a silent and unknowable presence.

When seen through a digitally rendered window, with its inevitable glitches and sense of unreality, friends and family became a compilation of remembered fragments. The connection is artificially contrived. Without the visceral presence of a living, breathing human person, the conversation becomes a performance, an echo of what we remember we did last time we were in a physical space with at person. The distance between us is accentuated when the connection drops, whether that is due to technological mishap or human frailty.