For this cover collaboration with TIME, we were asked to create an artwork reflecting on how Americans are reacting to the current surge in covid-19 cases, as everyone is about to embark into a winter of lockdown after spending months living in isolation with socialising and freedoms severely curbed. The idea was to capture the bleak forecast ahead, to create an eerie, foreboding sense of loneliness using a frosted window as a cold divide with the outside world.

Designing a cover about lockdown while being in national lockdown was an interesting artistic and production challenge. We created this against the clock, within our own small isolation bubble — using our own home windows, dressed with a generous amount of prop snow shot during a grey, but rather warm London day. As a complementing touch, we added a glimpse of a hand (pun intended) slightly interrupting the freshly traced message to enhance the sense of horror and desperation of being stuck inside for a long, dark period of time, with no end in sight.