The lockdown sketchbook started at the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic. Typically my sketchbooks are my most prized possessions, they catalog my life and I use them to transport myself back to the moment. However knowing this sketchbook would not live within my home for long allowed me to explore some of the darker feelings about processing this time in my life. Looking around my home I began to find narratives in small moments and objects I’d identify with -- the gesture of exhaustion in a sparkle unicorn or defeat in a leftover crust of pizza.
At the start of this sketchbook, I had ripped the labels off my grocery order and pasted it to most of the pages inside on each label: GIVES 8/9, etc. At the time I was feeling overwhelmed like I had been pushing myself beyond what I was capable of. The “Gives” labels and this sketchbook gave me a way to express some of the more difficult moments in our 150+ day experience in quarantine.
Should my sons see this book, I hope they don’t remember the fear and anxiety surrounding this pandemic -- only the laughter and love. I hope they know just how much I love them. That I would give them all that I can.
The Lock down, Sketchbook 2020
Sketchbook 2020-2021
Sketchbook 2019-2020
I seek to capture. Whether ink to paper, a brushstroke over canvas or documenting daily scenes in sketchbooks, art is how I chronicle my life. I am never without my sketchbook and a favorite pen and I am never more focused, calm or at peace than when I am making art.
I have been lucky enough to have had mentors who have shaped the way I see the world. The late Jeffrey Fisher molded my craft and me personally. He taught me to look at my subject and to trust what I see and through that process taught me to trust myself. As an art educator, I aspire to carry those lessons on through my own students, helping them find confidence and develop their own voice through art.
All images © Christine Kane Stevens. Please do not use without permission.
