Covid Times Economics

Covid Times Economics (2021) is a fractured meditation on systems under strain. Part of the Ephemeral AtmosphereCollection, this 48 x 48 inch acrylic painting unpacks the psychic toll and structural distortions of global economic anxiety through geometry, repetition, and disrupted symmetry.

At its core, the piece reflects on how the pandemic laid bare the fragility of institutions we once assumed were stable — jobs, markets, housing, even time itself. Grids crumble, lines intersect in fractured ways, and negative space becomes as important as what’s painted.

Muted greys and pale earth tones dominate, punctuated by flashes of sterile white and urgent red. There’s tension between containment and collapse. You can feel the algorithmic coldness of systems — and the human breath beneath them trying to break through.

This piece shares conceptual territory with Mark Lombardi, known for his diagrammatic narratives of global finance and power. But while Lombardi charted specific flows of influence, Covid Times Economics is more intuitive — less diagram, more distress signal.

The canvas is not chaotic — but it is exhausted. Shapes press against each other like policies and people in tight quarters. The geometry of despair. The illusion of order.

And yet, there’s something resilient here too. A shimmer. A line that curves instead of breaks. A reminder that abstraction can both reflect failure and imagine a way through.

As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this painting doesn’t offer answers — only insight, inquiry, and a visual record of economic disorientation.