…is the name of today’s story at Fictive Dream.
Throughout the month of February 2022 I will be showing you illustrations I did for Flash Fiction February 2022 at Fictive Dream, an online magazine devoted to the short story.
Here’s the image editor Laura Black chose for this story, Zooming Out, by Jacqueline Doyle.
And here is the artwork with the banner. Take a look at this image. And then…
Read the story at Fictive Dream.
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
Your painting gets it just right. When the world is reduced to a screen, things fall apart. (K)
Yes. And it is so easy to find youself in that situation these days.
The story captures the anxiety and dread I feel whenever I have to do an on-camera virtual meeting. I am thankful it is not a common experience for me as I intensely dislike it. I love the way your artwork captures the discombobulation of that experience and adds the sense of chaotic fracturing that the main character goes through. It looks like all of those other boxes for the colleagues break away and the screen cracks like a fissure as her sense of self splinters and I like the isolation, separation, and smallness of that pale blue box that represents her.
I like Zoom meetings for many reasons but then I am participating in things I want to, not because I have to (art classes vs. office meetings). I do think it is better to be in person but I choose Zoom over not being able to participate at all, in something I really want to be doing. But I think over all for society, we need to get back to actual experiences.
Zooming Out by Jacqueline Doyle is a story about the anxiety and social detachment that the narrator feels during a zoom session. Ultimately, the woman feels disconnected from her own self. This illustration captures this bleak situation perfectly. I love the arial view of the scene reminding us of a camera zooming out. The monochrome palette with the purple square for the diminishing narrator is just spot on. Bleak but beautiful. Thank you, Claudia.
Thank you. I have not had much trouble with the Zoom world, because for me it has been away to expand my world during the pandemic, but I only have to use it when I want to. I think in this story the detached online nature of the interactions just emphasizes the already existing lack of human connection that I guess was going on even before the disconnection of the pandemic. I find that really interesting – technology just emphasized a negative, rather than creating a positive – and it makes me think about how it will all play out in the future.