A video series by Annie Terrazzo and Amanda Quinn Olivar

The COVID Diaries, Volume 2 brings together four very different artists from around the world to voice unique perspectives on art and the ability to overcome challenges through their work.

From Duggie Fields, who has found hope in his work while fighting cancer, to Silvina Der Meguerditchian who has built a career on focusing on the hardships of belonging and identity, to Susan Woldman who stayed in her New York apartment though the pandemic to find a prolific artistic space, to Chaz Guest, an artist blending paint and racial truth during the civil unrest in the summer of 2020. Each is a different artist, but like all of us, they are trying to navigate these new challenges.

Duggie Fields grew up in the English countryside. He first came to notice in 1958, when he was 14, in the Summer Exhibition at the Bladon Gallery, Hurstbourne Tarrant. Fields briefly studied architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic before studying at the Chelsea School of Art for four years starting in 1964. He left with a scholarship that took him on his first visit to the United States, in 1968. As a student, Fields' work progressed through minimal, conceptual, and constructivist phases to a more hard-edged post-Pop figuration. His main influences at that time were Jackson Pollock, Mondrian, and comic books, with special regard to those worked on by Stan Lee. In 1968, after his US visit, Fields went to live in Earl's Court Square and shared a flat with Syd Barrett, who had just left Pink Floyd. Fields still lives in the same flat and he works in Barrett's former room, using it as his atelier. By the middle of the 1970s, his work included many elements that were later defined as Post-modernist. In 1983, Fields was invited to Tokyo by the Shiseido Corporation, where a gallery was created to show his paintings. For the occasion, the artist and his work were simultaneously featured in a television, magazine, billboard, and subway advertising campaign throughout Japan.

Silvina Der Meguerditchian

Silvina Der Meguerditchian’s work deals with issues related to the burden of national identity, the role of minorities in society, and the potential of a space "in-between". Der-Meguerditchian is interested in the impact of migration in the urban texture and its consequences. Reconstruction of the past and the building of archives are a red thread in her artistic research. Her work is multidisciplinary and uses different media. Since 2010 she has been the artistic director of Houshamadyan, a project to reconstruct an Ottoman Armenian town and village life. In 2014/15 she was awarded a fellowship at the Kulturakademie Tarabya, a residency program of the German Foreign Ministry and the Goethe Institute in Istanbul. Der Meguerditchian participated in Armenity, the Pavilion awarded with the Golden Lion at the 56th Venice Biennial for best national participation. Her work has been shown in many exhibitions around the world, including, among others, Germany, Argentina, the USA, and Turkey.

Susan Woldman

Susan Woldman, a New York City-based artist, brings her sensibility as a sculptor into her paintings. Thickly textured impasto surfaces combine with landscape imagery to create depth, movement, and light. Inspired by form rather than color, Woldman always begins with texture, digging her hands into a thick gel medium to create marks and symbols on the canvas before she paints. The recent recipient of the Kuniyoshi Painting Grant, Susan has studied at The Art Students League, received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC, studied sculpture in Lacoste, France, and received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Susan has exhibited extensively over the years in New York City and throughout the United States.

Chaz Guest

Chaz Guest is an American painter and sculptor of profound inventiveness, known for capturing the raw essence reflection of the universal human spirit. Blessed with gifts of realizing his richly textured visions and tapping into their vibrant essence, Guest leaves those who encounter his works moved in powerfully personal ways. From his acclaimed Cotton Series paintings of enslaved African Americans rendered on 100% pure Georgia cotton flags to his latest graphic novel creation, Buffalo Warrior, that is about to be a state of the art major motion picture, Guest proudly inserts his culture into every piece he makes. Typically donned in a Japanese kimono and slippers in his Mid-Wilshire Los Angeles studio where he is surrounded by bold, beautiful Africa-originated inspirations, Guest captures light energy and life legacy in his works. The catalyst of his art lies in how Guest injects purity and excellence throughout. “I trust my voice,” Guest states. “I have a story to express humanity.”