“I continued painting in my studio until last Monday when our government prohibited working outside the home except for professionals in essential duties," Paco Pomet concedes as he reports from Granada. As the Covid-19 pandemic seems to engulf Spain, we reach out to Juxtapoz friend and feature artist for our Art In Uncertain Times series, to see how he’s faring in the eye of the storm. A painter whose work regularly revolves around the depiction of people and the planet often facing otherworldly events, it’s easy to imagine him visualizing and painting the virulent virus. Cornered into his house by the invisible threat, the artist seemed to manage to find the balance to continue his creative practice through these tough times.
"Surely it is a whole new world order we are entering into," Pomet tells us when considering the aftermath of the current crisis. "It is kind of scary, not because of the pandemic itself (this is not the first one and will not definitely be the last one), but because of the changes in personal freedom and privacy that it will cause. We must be vigilant." Until Monday last week, his daily routine started with a drive to an old industrial building outside the city, where his studio is located. During his journey, he'd be listening to the national public radio station "with great music and a particularly good cultural program". Once inside he was able to continue working on his newest body of paintings disconnected from the world outside, as well as enjoy more music and a breaktime of table football. 
"Since I couldn't carry on like this and I had to stay confined, I started drawing at home at different moments of the day," he explains of the shift in his work routine. Other than that, the days are filled with kids doing school work online or the whole family playing a card game fittingly called Virus. Being a great fan of nature and outdoors, Pomet is particularly thankful for the panoramic vista of the Sierra Nevada mountain from their balcony. This is where his family joins their neighbors and the rest of the city as they famously applaud the sanitary personnel in the hospital. "They are literally giving their lives to deal with this crisis," the artist concludes his report by giving credit to those on the frontline of the insidious battle we're all fighting.
Text compiled by Sasha Bogojev
