KNOCKED OFF OUR Hamster Wheels

​"Knocked Off Our Hamster Wheels" - acrylic on cradled wood panel, 12" x 12" x .75".  Ready to hang (sides are painted; back is pre-wired.  No framing necessary!)  Available here and at Artfinder. 


This is the one silver lining of Covid. It knocks us all off our hamster wheels, of doing things in a particular way, and forces everyone to think of new ways of doing things. Which is actually, cognitively, quite good for you. In that sense, all our brains are forced to be more exercised than normal. Challenging your brain with novelty appears to provide cognitive protection.  - NEUROSCIENTIST DAVID EAGLEMAN

​Eagleman, in this interview with Elemental, suggests we really need these outrageous happenings in the world to exercise our brains. Maybe he's got a point, because the studio has been a wild rumpus lately as my imagination expands in unexpected directions.   So, in a way,  this novelty of a painting is intended to provide you cognitive protection, dear reader!

Knocked Off Our Hamster Wheels

When I think of all the new ways of doing things we've all developed in the last six months or so, my mind is a bit gobsmacked.  I mean, how many things CAN I have delivered instead of going to the store?  And how many new paths have I walked to find the road less traveled and thus less populated with potential COVID carriers? What about how we have begun to utilize technology for socializing in a serious way?  Or how we've developed NASA caliber questionnaires to determine if another human can come into our personal bubbles?  And dating in a COVID world is a particular maze of brain challenge that I get lost in and meander through.  Send cookies and tea.

I'm thinking we are all going to have the healthiest brains in the history of brains.  And if I keep thinking like that, the art just might get even  more peculiar as this pandemic rolls on. :)

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About the art::   I have a small collection of work by local artist  Christopher St. John.  So if you spend a little time with his incredible ceramic pieces, you begin to imagine most animals with human-ish faces.  And so this rabbit seems to have a whimsical girl trapped inside.  Or a whimsical girl has been cursed (or blessed?) by a magician and turned into a hare.  Either way, it's a lot of paint on a piece of wood panel.