05/26/2026
While helping others process grief and uncertainty, she was navigating her own. Through art, an expressive art therapist transformed the confusion, isolation, and emotional complexity of Covid into reflection and healing.
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During the isolation of Covid, I found myself endlessly doom scrolling through social media, searching for distraction, and the illusion of comfort. Again and again, I would pause on images that initially appeared decorative or visually seductive, rich in color, texture, and organic form, only to realize they were magnified images and illustrations of the Covid virus attached to news articles and public health posts.
The experience was strangely disorienting . I was surprised by my own attraction to these images and unsettled by the collision between beauty and fear. There was something almost hypnotic about the visual language surrounding the pandemic: the bright colors, repeating forms, and soft cellular textures transformed something frightening into something aesthetically compelling.
This mixed media collage emerged from that tension. By cutting out and incorporating some of those virus images into the work, I wanted to explore the strange intimacy we developed with the visual culture of Covid, how the virus infiltrated not only our bodies and communities, but also our imaginations, screens, and daily rituals of looking.
The piece reflects the emotional complexity of that time: anxiety, overstimulation, isolation, fascination, and the human tendency to seek beauty and meaning even within crisis. The layered materials, fragmented imagery, and bursts of color mirror the psychological experience of living through a period where fear and visual saturation became intertwined.
Creating this work allowed me to transform an unsettling collective experience into a personal act of reflection and expression. Rather than turning away from those contradictory feelings, I wanted to stay with them, to examine how something associated with danger could also evoke curiosity, attraction, and creative response.
~ Lauren Levine LPCs, REAT (Registered Expressive Art Therapist)
Pittsburgh, PA
Former Arkansan
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