Artist Trine Churchill is using her art to defeat isolation. And what better way than to make YOU a part of that. Her participatory project Together Now began as a neighborly, local project and has now grown a global focus – and you can be a part of it, too.
“We are going through the very same human experience right now. I couldn’t shake it out of my head, the historic moment of sheltering – and who are we sheltering with? Families, roommates, your cat? Or are you by yourself? I wanted to document this future memory in a painting,” Churchill attests.
“And I wanted to engage with people anywhere and hopefully give them a sense of coming together despite what differences we might have culturally and socially.”
According to the artist, all of you reading this article can participate. “It is easy – and hopefully fun – to do. Take a picture. Send it to me. That’s it. If I end up creating a painting based on your picture, I mail off a really nice high-quality, archival print of the paintings. I sign it to you – and send it to you wherever you live.”
Churchill is currently at an early project stage, waiting to see how people are responding overall.
“I would love to see an exhibition of all these paintings. I see them covering the walls, lined up and giving a simultaneous window into how we lived the year 2020, separated but together. A book could be another way to go about it. And that would allow me to write more in words too, tell people’s verbal stories along with the paintings doing their own storytelling.”
She wants as many to participate as possible. “I’ll paint until we are no longer sheltering,” she says, but possibly for much longer than that. Her only criteria is that the photograph sent to her has to be taken during these sheltering times.
“Ideally, the picture would include a little bit of where you are sheltering, your surroundings, your room. Let me know where you live, and tell me how you are doing. And of course, I would love to get everyone’s help in spreading the word, and giving this project legs to walk on,” Churchill explains.
Like past work of Churchill’s, above, this new body of work is dreamy, delicate, and filled with a true sense of humanity.
Works created thus far, including “Jude,” depicting a small child looking out at the bright world, safe and solitary, but awash in grey inside, are richly moving. Her works have always been lush and figurative, and are so here.
The artist is a story-teller, and as such, she describes her work as “often based on memories with a dream-like or fantasy twist.” In previous series, she describes her paintings as “based on my own family’s photos and history. With the Together Now project, that will change.”
Her images are now “based on somebody else’s photo and moment, and I will be creating their memory paintings. However, what I am finding already with the kind of paintings that I do, is that even the most personal moment finds it ways into a shared universal space of human existence.”
And isn’t that what being together, right now, when we are physically removed, all about?
Send your photos to Churchill at: tc@trinechurchill.com
Check out her 3-minute video about the project:
https://www.trinechurchill-store.com/the-together-now-project
And let’s share the news together. You can find more info through Churchill’s own newsletters at
https://www.trinechurchill-store.com/newsletter-sign-up
And on Facebook and Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/trinechurchillart https://www.facebook.com/Trine-Churchill-studio-115916608426457
Genie Davis; photos: Trine Churchill