Ross Bleckner is a contemporary New York artist whose work I’ve admired since 1983. I remember seeing a magazine article (I think it was in Art in America) about his Weather series and being intrigued by what I saw – abstract quasi-landscape meditations on light and shadow. A few years later, I read about his dark, obscured interiors with chandeliers, urns, and flowers, which evoked loss and mourning in the age of the AIDS crisis. It was these paintings which convinced me Bleckner was someone I should watch, and I have been following his career since then.

Over the years, stripes, domes, birds, dots, flowers, and other imagery have appeared and re-appeared in Bleckner’s work, which straddles the representational/non-representational line. In the late 1990s, he started a series of Cell paintings which are simultaneously realist and completely abstract. Although he has referenced many different styles and movements during his career, he has never fit into any one box – he is on his own path. I’ve only seen a handful of his actual pieces, but he is an artist I hold in very high esteem.

The last several weeks, I’ve thought about Bleckner often, as every time I see an image of the coronavirus, it reminds me of his Cell paintings, which he started the year his father died of cancer. Bleckner is known for the elegiac feel of much of his work; it all seems to fit.

During this trying time, please stay home, be good to each other, be safe, and, as your mother told you, wash your hands. This too shall pass. I hope.