Arron Kuiper

This is an ongoing project to paint a portrait (small figurative representation, a three dimensional stick figure) of every single person who passes away due to the virus in the U.K. The project is simultaneously a memorial, a commentary and a way to make sense of the current situation with the bias increasingly on the side of memorial the longer it continues.

The way this is achieved is using my unique method of sculptural oil painting, I take a syringe filled with oil paint and inject it into a transparent water based gel where, due to chemical repulsion, the paint remains suspended yet is still able to be manipulated.

In the image the cluster you can see at the bottom of the glass box consists of 536 individually painted stick people. The colours used are white, blue and grey or the colours associated with medical face masks. As of the 29th of March the box contains 1228 tiny people.

I continue to be affected and somewhat changed by this ongoing process. The innitial thought was that I can give something small for each of them and I now feel a mounting duty of care to all in my sculptural painting and I can realise a sense of the collective loss that I know we all share. It has also allowed me to see the togetherness and selflessness throughout the country, that although we are separated we are not divided.

I shall continue to work on this project as long as I am able.