Artist Spotlight: Eileen Shaloum
Word of the Day: Overwhelming
ARTIST COMMENTS
My painting, Spinning Our Wheels, is a universal lament. Embedded into this narrative piece are some of the obituaries from the May 23, 2020 New York Times article that I have used in my prior work, Enough. The sheer number of deaths documented in that issue were unimaginable at the time. And now, almost two years later, as we approach an unthinkable number of lost lives, we have become used to the daily roll call as if it were only to be expected.
The words “LONG LIVES” across the center mean actual lives lost or maybe the hope we have that we will be able to have long lives if we escape the insidious germs all around us. In between the two words is a woman’s face—the eyes are from a portrait of an old man. On the red circle around the eye is the word “END.” Behind the Statue of Liberty and her is a map of the United States, mostly of the East Coast where I am from. My husband and I split our time between New York (home base), Florida (where the red X is), and England where our children and grandchildren live. Therefore, I am often on a plane flying from one place to the other.
Lady Liberty stands tall and proud, but this one has a hand spinning the globe at the tip of her finger like a circus performer playing with the world. Symbolically, she stands for freedom. It is where the world wants to be right now—free from the constraints COVID has put on our lives. The spinning globe is a metaphor for all the progress we have made while we feel like we are still in the same place as we were when it all began.
DEFINITION
Something overwhelming is very intense and hard to deal with: overwhelming events make people worried and stressed out.
It's hard to overcome overwhelming things.
If you feel an overwhelming need to laugh, you're probably going to laugh. If you have an overwhelming feeling of sadness, you'll probably cry. An overwhelming amount of homework is almost impossible to get done.
Adults who work, have families, and struggle to pay the bills feel like their lives are overwhelming. A tornado or hurricane is an overwhelming force of nature. When something is overwhelming, there's not much you can do against it.
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