Covid in our deep subconscious

I was drawing with a four-year old recently. She kept making familiar variants of the same kinds of drawings: first a round shape, then short lines coming off it all over. Then she’s connect the short lines and add more short lines. Very spikey and beautiful at once. “Hmm,” I said to myself. “Where else have I seen that?”

There’s a growing awareness of how Covid has crept into all parts of our conscious, and unconscious, life.

“Kids always love to draw monsters,” said Dennis McCarthy, a play therapist in Kingston, who himself has not seen a big uptick in Covid-related drawings. “It’s not usually scary,” he said. “It gives them a sense of engagement and control.”