When the pandemic hit, these musicians returned to their art school roots

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, it came at a time when musician and new mom Jenn Grant needed a break.

“You will find no way that I at any time would have experienced, like, a mat go away,” she claimed. “And I was very fatigued from touring a record with a new infant and dealing with postpartum [depression and anxiety].”

On prime of that, Grant was pregnant with her 2nd boy or girl.

And in all those times of constraints, Grant located herself executing anything she hadn’t been accomplishing much of in the past decade and a 50 %: portray.

Grant graduated with a bachelor of great arts from NSCAD College in 2006. But as her songs vocation took off, she struggled to contain painting in her life, despite the fact that she did paint the covers for some of her early albums.

Grant claimed her NSCAD times served her triumph over her stage fright. While she’d been crafting tunes since she was a kid and felt drawn to a profession in new music, undertaking in community designed her so nervous she was not capable to do it.

She said when she enrolled at NSCAD, she was more cozy expressing herself as a result of visual art.

“The creative local community at NSCAD was helping and supportive … and it form of lended alone to me becoming more at ease as a performer,” she stated.

Doing work with an easel in her kitchen, Grant started out painting yet again in 2020.

Painting has develop into this sort of a element of her life that in the earlier yr, she experienced a right studio designed at her Lake Echo, N.S., residence.

“I just truly feel so, so fully written content and joyful when I can get in there, which sometimes I am in there each individual day, all working day extensive and it really is amazing,” she reported.

Grant has an exhibit scheduled for March 2024 at The Prow Gallery in Halifax. And recently, she started portray portraits of Palestinian journalists to elevate funds for the Palestine Kid’s Reduction Fund. She stated she’s raised practically $32,000 accomplishing that.

“The true detail about it, I think, is just trying to convey recognition to what is actually taking place in Gaza,” she said.

Musician Andrew Scott has completed a similar pivot back to artwork.

“When the pandemic strike, it was this kind of an possibility for me to genuinely, really lean in to this follow since my, quotation, day position, was not on the table for a couple yrs,” he claimed.

The Sloan drummer was three credits brief of a diploma from NSCAD when he dropped out in the early 1990s to pursue a occupation in tunes.

He moved from Halifax to Toronto in the mid-1990s.

As the group’s fame rose, artwork moved to the back burner for him. In 1997 or 1998, he started portray once again, leasing some studios.

But for the earlier two many years, he is been carrying out artwork off and on in an unheated garage at his Toronto dwelling.

Considering the fact that the pandemic, he typically spends a handful of hours a day doing the job on artwork in his studio. Using monochromatic phthalo blue and titanium white paint, he is been occupied producing authentic performs, as perfectly as undertaking commissions of people’s cats and canine. He utilizes oil-primarily based paints, which will not freeze, a must for the unheated house.

Scott sells his perform as a result of his Instagram web page, bypassing the gallery route.

“I believe that all the gross sales that I generate have much more of an genuine conversation to them due to the fact it can be just a possible purchaser and me, the maker, and it just commences with a conversation and you can find very little intimidating about it,” reported Scott.

Even when Scott hasn’t been producing art, he is soaked it up, browsing galleries when touring.

“I have absolutely nothing but time all day, each individual working day,” he explained. “Like, I only have to function at eight or nine at night time. So the past issue I’m heading to do is just sit about and view the clock tick by. I am likely to go see art, if it’s accessible, in almost every place I go.”

When Scott remaining NSCAD, a professor instructed Scott mail postcards from the highway, with the purpose of granting some credits in trade for this assignment. But Scott hardly ever mailed any.

Scott is organizing to move back to Halifax in just the subsequent 12 months. Questioned if he has any intention to entire his diploma, he explained the school closes university student files following 10 decades, so without the need of commencing around, acquiring a diploma will never be very simple.

“I never will need it any more,” he mentioned. “It would be good to exhibit my mom, but she understands.”

Additional Leading Tales