Straddling the Void

Straddling the Void was created in the summer of 2020. I was testing my new colored pencils – the Pablo series from Caran d’Ache – but I was also trying to overcome my often crippling fear of drawing. It had been my dream to become a professional artist for decades, so you can imagine what a deflating fear this was, especially since I used to love drawing in my younger years. Armed with new pencils I felt like I could try a completely new style, and a new concept. I drew quite a few pieces, but these four formed a series, and I didn’t even notice until five years later. At the time I didn’t even really know what they meant. Now I can see how they each represent the feeling of being stuck in between things.

2020 was a pivotal year for life on earth. Most of us humans definitely felt stuck between worlds. We didn’t know what life would be like once the COVID 19 pandemic became ingrained in our daily life, or if it would just miraculously go away. We didn’t know if our jobs would come back, if governments would finally realize we need a universal basic income, if capitalism would finally completely collapse. In the United States, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we knew the way we approached policing and activism had to change as well, but there was too much disagreement on how those things should change.

We were very much stuck between the old and new worlds. Here in 2025 we’re stuck again. In so many ways Trump’s second presidency has felt as unstable as when COVID 19 rolled into the country. Everything is changing, and we don’t know what our futures will look like.

Of course we each feel these shifts very individually. For me in 2020 traversing the void felt full of optimistic possibility. I felt I was moving from a place of perfectionism and fear to a place of unbridled creativity and curiosity. I felt I was moving from being an employee to having my own business, and I was moving from being a reproductive age woman to a post-menopausal crone. My mother had died in 2019, and my father was remodeling my childhood home. These events also left a void that had to be crossed.

Each of these four pieces tells a story of moving from one state of being to another, inviting us each to ask ourselves: how am I dealing with the big changes in my life, and the bigger changes in my nation and the world?