We are the Universe.
A NOTE FROM THE ARTIST:
I am always in process, trying to understand what my art is about and where I am going with it. What is next? Stagnation is not acceptable. When you are an intuitive painter, and a deeply visual thinker, you don’t always have verbal explanations for why your work looks the way it does or why it evolves in a certain direction. Often, only in retrospect, can you explain why you choose a certain motif, color, approach, etc. For example, the ribbony strings blowing in the wind of my works appeared long before I made the connection with my childhood fascination with the plant dodder. So it was with my movement towards biophilic art. My concern about Climate Change began decades ago, but I didn’t know how to make it part of my work. I care deeply about the environment and I know that visual art can be an effective tool of social and political change. What I didn’t know was how to incorporate it into the work I do. I want to be effective, to have something to say that contributes to the discussion. While I sorted through these ideas, I began incorporating endangered species into my compositions. Not as large and obvious focal points, because in the real world they are rare and one must look for them. Still, I searched for ways to put conservation front and center.
Epiphanies often happen after a brief time away. So it was for me. After a refresh, I began to reexamine my whole portfolio. Only then did I realize that it was all there in my work all along. Because I care about it , because it's on my mind, the visual elements of our climate crisis are pervasive: Fire, ribbons of fire, plumes of steam, forests burning; Heat, the sun a hot eye upon the landscape; lakes receding in drought; Water, torrential flooding, cascading water, tornados and spirals of water like hurricanes, glacial ice beneath tropical water. Space and galaxy motifs found their way into my work to express how we are linked to a greater whole. We are with it and a part of it. The Earth is not over there. The Milky Way is not over there. The Universe is not over there. It’s right here where we are! And it’s powerful and fragile and wondrous. It’s part of us and it’s worth caring for.
