by Cat Jones

There’s a video to watch at the bottom. Scroll down if you just want to see it, without having to read an explanation for it. Otherwise….

Last year, I was preparing for one of the best shows I’ve ever had. I was in the middle of painting a collection of work having to do with the after-hours lives of workers, and I was looking forward to showing them in a New York venue that had been the stuff of dreams for a starving artist like me.

Then the pandemic hit, and everything changed, for all of us.

I didn’t exactly expect art to make me rich – there’s a reason we call ourselves “starving” artists. So it isn’t the money I missed by having all my shows canceled last year by the virus. It’s something else: The pandemic has taught me that I really do flourish on the energy and vibes of the audience. I didn’t know this about myself or my work. In fact, I always thought I was way too misanthropic to care what anybody thinks of my work.

(I know, it seems ridiculous now to me, too, but that’s really what I thought. Id figured I’m just called to paint, and I always assumed that was between me and the Muse; that it was just an added bonus when other people like the work enough to buy a piece. I hadn’t realized that the Muse speaks to, and through, all of us to each other, in a great feedback loop… so that we are all, always, in collaboration on a great, beautiful, meaningful, work of art.)

It was only when all the galleries were shuttered and all the shows canceled that I came to see that there is a very real communion between artist and audience… that I thrive on this communion, and that the art itself is impacted by it. I miss it. Exhibiting one’s work to each other, bearing witness to each other’s work, is part and parcel of the calling of our souls to the arts. It’s the unspoken contract we have together, and it turns out that sharing of bits of our souls in this way is much more important to me than I had realized, and much less a solitary endeavor. The sharing goes both ways. The art requires us all. The virus has taught us many things, and one of them, I think, is the importance of coming together again.

So, I took some of the voices in my head and all of the pieces that were supposed to have hung in a NY gallery that got shuttered by the pandemic last year (plus a couple others), and made a film with them. I share with you here all the work that I’ve done for the past year and a half or so. There’s nothing to buy. Just a raw need for us to share a collective exhale, a moment of reflection on everything we’ve gone through together in this strange, paradigm- shifting, pandemic year. Please just sit back and, for the next 5ish minutes, enjoy the show.”