The Orange County Artists Guild is a non-profit organization seeking to increase the visibility and recognition of area artists and crafts people.

During this time of quarantine, we are most lucky as artists to be able to continue the work of making. It may be that if we are forced to stay with our work, and are less distracted by things beckoning us from the outside world, we might find that we can go deeper than we expected.This may take a variety of forms, and sometimes it involves even more innovation than we are used to. The following are a few examples from the OCAG community of work being produced in this time of quarantine. – Shelly Hehenberger

Since I began teaching abstract painting and collage a few years ago (through a joint appointment with the Durham Arts Council and OLLI program at Duke) I have looked for ways to both stretch myself and give my students some new ways of starting their paintings. Last year, dealing with the trauma of a flooded and destroyed art studio, I also needed something more intuitive and less planned, since my ability to concentrate was often compromised by fatigue and distress. I began paintings by coating thick watercolor paper with a coat of gesso and then a coat of matte medium...…

One of the ways that I like to paint is to simply allow my hand to create colorful shapes in a seemingly random pattern, until a coherent painting forms and begins to look ‘finished’. This can be done using any 2D or 3D medium. I often listen to music that matches whatever mood I’m in when I start to paint. I then quite simply ‘let the music take me where my heart wants to go’ (from Cat Stevens circa 1975). The first piece is a 13x17inch liquid acrylic that was actually started by playfully stamping a color soaked sponge through…