I believe that each of us do, regardless of our career has a responsibility for the environment. Some artists, the ones that are in the limelight, would carry the message more easily, and be influential to others more so, and should. However, I also wonder how irreversible it all is at this point, and how, as humans, we’re here as another piece of this puzzle and meant to be as we are.
There is a four-hundred-acre plot of woods bordering our land that I get to hike, and it’s fundamentally the highlight of my daily life. There is so much wonder in a single acre of land, and I get to explore all of that. It has been the best gift, and I’m ever grateful for it. I have come to know those acres and I see the same animals over the years; deer families, box turtles, blue herons, and have since given most of them names. A fox often visits our yard that I call Saint Winifred Neko Chase Kitsune Reynardine. (I couldn’t settle on one name.) I can sit quietly in a chair, tucked into some foliage and watch her hunting, going unseen, so lately I’ve been doing a lot of that in the evenings. I’m at work on a painting about her now called Thieves. It’s a sort of homegrown fable about what our world would be like if the animals overthrew us. I like that idea. In the image, there are a couple of foxes running off with some lady’s jewelry, a locket with a little boy’s photo inside, and they’re having a field day.
I am most drawn to the forest. I feel like I could wander through it for days, just to be a part of it. At times, I want to lay down in the leaf litter and wait there for the ground to swallow me up. I’ve always wanted to see the earth to shake us off like a flea on a dog. I’m not a hippy. I just don’t like humans as much, and I love seeing nature reclaiming the things we create, like ivy creeping into a house and taking it to the ground again. I’ve painted wind themes in the past because I’ve been left in awe by a couple of strong storms that destroyed my studio in two separate events, a possible tornado and Hurricane Irene. The force behind mother nature is stunning, and it left me in pursuit of some of its essence I suppose.
