In 2019, on a terrace in Chapala, Mexico, Edward A. Samuelson picked up a Sharpie and began to draw.
He had no plan. No image in mind. He simply put marker to paper each morning and watched what emerged — bold, surrealist pieces he calls MOMENTS. Over two years, as the world locked down and the fog of isolation thickened, he created 200 of them.
This book contains sixty of his favorites.
The Art of Isolation is both an art book and a memoir — a dual portrait of the creative act and the emotional landscape from which it arose. The MOMENTS are vivid and unapologetic: some dark and brooding, some light and joyful, some floral, some geometric. Their order is deliberately random, mirroring the randomness isolation brought to daily life.
Between the art, Samuelson writes honestly about what it meant to live through the pandemic as an American expat in Mexico — the emotional roller coaster, the fog that would not lift, and the beliefs that ultimately carried him through:
— I believe in Magic. In Miracles. In Signs.
— I believe in the Goodness of Humanity.
— I believe GOD IS GOOD — ALL THE TIME.
Drawing on the Four Laws of Spirituality, the Four Agreements of Don Miguel Ruiz, and the poetry of Mary Oliver, Samuelson finds his way through creativity and belief — the conviction that whatever ends was supposed to end, and whatever begins begins at exactly the right time.
For anyone who navigated their own fog — of isolation, loss, or simply the strange suspension of ordinary life — this book is both a mirror and a companion.
About the author: Edward A. Samuelson MA, DD, known as Lalo or edd, is an artist, healer, and life guide in Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico. The Art of Isolation is a record of creativity as survival — proof that even in the deepest fog, art finds the light.
