It is impossible to remember exactly the moment when things broke between the time before and the time of now. It felt like a slow progression over a short time. Compressed explosion.

For the first two weeks after the New York City shelter in place order on March 16th, 2020, I felt paralyzed with fear and anxiety. Fear that a breath of fresh air would make me sick with this virus ravaging New York City. And anxious that I would pass it to my husband, and he would die. Everything was urgent and unknown.

At some point I was compelled to go outside. Walking. Re-learning to breathe. For me, time spread, measured in the environment. Flashes of green, yellow, pink among the winter detritus. Rain drops huddled, frozen on buds. The shifting air temperature. The cloud arrangement mirrored in water among skyscrapers. The wind gusts. Watching a pair of red tail hawks mating ritual, soaring back and forth together on the updrafts in the architecture. The pink moon. Bird song. And the ever-grey light. I found a kind of known unknown comfort in the grey wet light. No one else was out. The silence.

I started to distill these solitary walks outside into my landscape works on canvas made on the roof of my building; afterward taking them back to the places they were born. I remember, it was April 21st, the day before Earth Day. I took a landscape out to Sheep Meadow. It was overcast. Not too windy. The birds were singing. It was peaceful. The soft pitter patter of rain washed the landscape as I lay breathing underneath it all. On April 30th a bed of cherry blossoms reflected the landscape I lay within it. May 4th, I washed and drew the wind at North Meadow, then danced at sunset on my roof, shrouded in the landscape, buoyed by that same wind. Another drizzly grey day, May 8th, I took a new landscape out to Sheep Meadow. All I saw was a person in an orange jacket followed by a person in a black jacket walking across a large expanse of green against the backdrop of New York City. I drenched it all in rain: rolling, laying, jumping, finally dragging the landscape across the grass. And then I was alone with the birds.

Since then, more and more I go out with my work to re-meet the city scape. I am grounded by the structure of the city landscape, time spreading out over the environment. I can depend on that. Through these interventions, I sustain myself and my husband. As afraid as I was about getting sick, I know that the air I breathe will keep me alive.

Susan Luss – 9 June 2020