Empty High Way 
Breakthrough 
Floating
by Jane Forrest
“Empty Highway” -oil on canvas, 30×40, 2020
This painting is about the moment of realization that this pandemic we are living through, is so much more severe than I had thought. Around mid April 2020 I went running around my neighbourhood. This was the first time I had really left my house since March. It was damp and cold but I was so thrilled to leave my house that I didn’t care. I ended up at this bridge overlooking the highway. It was about 6 o’clock, rush hour. Usually right now the highway was packed with people, but at that moment I realized that the highway was empty, the world had stopped. I then realized that this virus was so much worse than I could have ever imagined.
“Floating” – oil on canvas, 24×36, 2021
This painting is what the anxiety of the pandemic feels like. I am floating and have no control. I don’t know when I’ll get to hug my grandparents again, or if I’ll get to see my friends on my 16th birthday. I am constantly told “just a few more weeks” “it will be over soon” but then there’s another announcement, and another lockdown. The light represents art and specifically my art class at school. Art has been the thing to get me through this pandemic, and the community at my art school is the light in all of this darkness.
“Breakthrough” -oil on canvas, 24×40
When making this painting for the first time art wasn’t about the end result, it was about the process. When making this painting I was letting go of anger and guilt, and everything I had carried around throughout my life. Before I had used art as an escape, but now during this process of letting go, I was using art as a tool.
by Molly Korzenowski
My work explores the complicated relationship between women and modern society. Although we are decades passed the times of the ideological dichotomy of the private and public sphere and women’s suppression of the vote, we are by no means living in a society in which women are free.
The lived reality of women has finally started to be heard after years of silence in a male dominated society. But we can’t get too excited — too often her voice is still dismissed by those who need to understand what she is saying most. Although masajsony runs farther below the surface now then before, it still shows its ugly head in our everyday life.
I have been working on a series of charcoal drawings that document femininity without it’s stereotypical fluff and frills. My work pulls from the stone-cold truth of women’s experiences and presents the an honest picture of our lived reality.
Language plays a huge role in how women are talked about and how they are heard. The words we use were created without the input of women, so it has been up to us to start building a vocabulary we can use to accurately express our truth. This process has just begun and has a long way to come. Until then, we must try to assert ourselves against the narrative of society and push our way out of the noise.
Like what you see? Find more of Molly’s work in our print edition of Vol. 2!
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