This month, the State of the Art Gallery presents eARTh: a Celebration. The works examine the state of our changing planet and our role as artists and citizens. My three paintings respond to issues of climate change caused by our life style: over-consumption of fossil fuels and misuse of our land and water resources.

Swamps Burning

Swamps Burningacrylic on canvas, 20×20″
$600

Drought, draining the swamp for agriculture, and over demand for water consumption are destructive forces. On my recent trip to Florida I saw these forces at work. Thick clouds of smoke obscured the highway as we drove through a wild fire, grass burning on both sides of the highway. I visited the beautiful Everglades and learned that it is being sustained by artificial irrigation and periodic flooding.

Michael Grunwald. Why the Everglades is Burning, and How We Sucked it Dry. http:grist.org/article/fortune-and-flame/ 22 May 2008

Fire and Ice

Robert Frost wrote “How will the world end? Fire or Ice…” Perhaps the answer is both, in a paradoxical way – Global warming could plunge North America and Western Europe into a deep freeze. The melting of the polar ice caps can destroy one of the feedback loops – the Gulf Stream- that helps the earth maintain its temperature equilibrium. “Without the vast heat that these ocean currents deliver–comparable to the power generation of a million nuclear power plants–Europe’s average

Fire and Ice

16 x 20 oil on canvas
$550

temperature would likely drop 5 to 10°C (9 to 18°F), and parts of eastern North America would be chilled somewhat less. Such a dip in temperature would be similar to global average temperatures toward the end of the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago.”

A Chilling Possibility. NASA Science News. http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/05mar_arctic/

Discontinuities

In “Discontinuities” I was thinking about the need to reverse these devastating greenhouse effects. This painting started with the same colors and initial composition as “Swamps are

Burning”, but I turned it with every succeeding revision. I had never done that before, and it gave me a fresh perspective on the painting at every turn. I made changes that I wouldn’t have thought of had I stayed with my usual habit of painting in one orientation.

Discontinuities
20 x 20 Acrylic on canvas
$600

A quick google search on the internet uncovers scores of articles and lists of things we can do as individuals, as well as things we need to urge our government to enact to reverse climate change. We know what we need to do, or do we? Even though we may believe that we are destroying our environment and need to do something different, we struggle to keep our way of life unchanged. From the point of view of being immersed in our daily lives, it can be very difficult to imagine how life could be different, and yet very satisfying. We need to do a radical shift in our thinking and our way of life. Having unlimited quantities of invisible energy that we can just plug an appliance into whenever, how often, and for as long as we want does not let us imagine that energy is anything other than infinite. If we relied on wind or solar energy, there might be days when we would need to be willing to put off vacuuming or doing laundry until the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. Our water materializes seemingly from nowhere, and disappears after it is used and becomes waste. It is so hard to imagine water as being a precious and limited resource, easy to contaminate and difficult to clean. Our garbage disappears in the middle of the night when we put it out on the curb. We don’t get the chance to see the mountains  of landfills that grow far away from us in someone else’s backyard. It is hard to imagine what people did before the availability of plastic to wrap our food, and paper towels and tissues to clean up with. “Will we look into the eyes of our children and confess that we had the opportunity but lacked the courage? that we had the technology but lacked the vision?” (a quote from Greenpeace: Energy (R)evolution). We don’t have all the answers to the questions, or all the technological pieces to put together the solution. We definitely need some adjustment to our vision –by  looking farther down the road beyond now, and casting a wider glance beyond here. It is ironic, though, considering how we were exhorted in the 60’s to try to just “be here now”. We need to re-envision what life could be like as we go from thinking about where we are personally and locally in the present  to where we could be collectively and globally in the future.

Greenpeace: Energy [R]evolution 2010A blueprint for revolutionizing a broken energy economy. http://www.scribd.com/doc/34601288/Greenpeace-Energy-R-evolution-USA-Energy-Outlook-2010

 Naomi Klein. The Change Within: The Obstacles We Face Are Not Just External. The Nation. April 22, 2014

Michael Grunwald. Why the Everglades is Burning, and How We Sucked it Dry. http:grist.org/article/fortune-and-flame/ 22 May 2008

A Chilling Possibility. NASA Science News. http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/05mar_arctic/

I have been working on landscapes again, and am hoping to finish a 20×30 painting of autumn woods filled with beech and birch trees.. Here is a glimpse of how I went about this process. I had prepared a canvas (see previous post)  with a light purple/gray ground. I worked from photo provided, and also additional source material for fall color. After working on it for about a month, I felt that I was getting very tight. I put it away for several weeks, started other things to loosen up with. I am now back at it. It is pretty well set  for composition, placement of objects, and depth. Now it needs the sparkle provided by the front and up close layer of paint – the foliage that overlaps the trees – not much, because the view is the trunks of mature trees.

First Step:determining the shape of forest and sky

Starting to locate trees and rocks, working from a photograph

Additional source material for fall colors of beech and birch.

Trees and rocks are where they belong – no depth yet

added depth and density of trees, directionality of light

Here is a preview of paintings that I will have on display at the State of the Art Gallery during January in the first of two shows celebrating SOAG’s 25^th Anniversary. During January and February the gallery will be featuring works of the members, half of the members, in turn, participating each month.  This will allow for a rich sampling of new work from all of us.

My work this month is taking a radical departure from my usual bucolic landscapes. These paintings are not pretty. They are in fact very disturbing. They are painted in response to media reports of violence and disaster from around the world. To be acquainted with the harsh realities that people face in areas torn by strife, civil war, and persecution requires some action. Finding a visual image that portrays or symbolizes the issue helps me to process the raw emotion generated by the news. I want these paintings to remind people that there are others whose lives are unimaginably difficult. I want the paintings also to ask the viewer to probe the dark corners of their souls and reference their own sorrow, fears, and loneliest thoughts, in order to activate empathy and compassion for others who may seem very different from themselves. Noam Chomsky says “If you take a look at the progressive changes that have taken place in the country, say, just in the last 50 years – the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, opposition to aggression, the women’s movement, the environmental movement and so on, they were led by popular organizations, by activists on the ground.” We have only made a dent in those issues.  We are going to need a resurgence of activists.

Daily Life
Acrylic on Canvas, 18×24″

Daily Life was created in reaction to events in Syria – but it could just as well be a bombed out city in Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Libya. It is unimaginable that people’s daily lives can contain the horror of repeated bombings, death and destruction, and continue to go on in the middle of rubble. I don’t know how people cope with that.

Voyage to a Better Life

Acrylic on Canvas, 18×24″

Voyage to a Better Life was prompted last October by news that a boat carrying as many as 500 people capsized and caught fire off the Italian island of Lampedusa. At least 110 people died. This was just one story among many in the rising global phenomenon of  hundreds of thousands of  migrants seeking a better life at great expense and at the mercy of violent and unscrupulous smugglers. Migrants are often sent to sea in overcrowded vessels without enough engine power to make such a long and dangerous journey.

For more information, Lampedusa’s boat people: One man’s story   http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/06/01/italy.lampedusa.boat.people/index.html

Risk for a better life ends in death for 22 people near Indonesia http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/world/indonesia-boat-sinks/index.html

Gold and Blue #4 is in a series of abstract paintings that start with a simple combination of two colors, and then

Gold & Blue#4
Acrylic on Canvas, 18×18″

develop as a dialog with the paint, reacting to the shapes and colors with each addition or subtraction. The composition of this one was inspired by the border of a beautiful blue and yellow silk scarf that was draped around a candle during a solstice celebration, and a simplified image of poinsettia petals, beautiful and simple images of celebration. It was not my intent to create a political painting, but soon the red rays were taking on more and more energy.. The painting absorbed some violence. I have been thinking about how many drone strikes have killed civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen during weddings and birthday parties, working in the fields, meeting after work, going back to help their wounded companions. The joy and happiness of a family celebration or an everyday activity shattered by unnecessary death.

Some references: http://rt.com/news/un-us-yemen-drones-860/

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-08-04/news/bs-ed-afghan-violence-20110804_1_drone-strikes-drone-operators-protest-bombing

http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysis/us-drone-attacks-slaughter-of-innocents-247258.html

Two Figures

Acrylic on Canvas, 18×24″

Two Figures started as an abstract composition with one vertical turquoise rectangle and three horizontal yellow rectangles. I did a small version in acrylic paint on paper last January. I was not satisfied, but hesitated to muddle with it, so I put it away. In November, the painting surfaced again. I put it up on my wall and started an 18 x24” version in acrylic on stretched canvas. This time I started by painting the edges bright blue, then I painted the turquoise and yellow rectangles. I had to put in my ubiquitous diagonal line, and by then it was beginning to look like an interior space, which called for some figures. Much thinking and gazing time was needed  before I was able to complete the wall on the right side of the painting –a grill sort of structure (I like to play vertical lines against horizontal shapes) which felt better as a less substantial, shadowy or breaking up sort of structure. The figure on the right also became less substantial by adding the background color to its shape. What does it mean? no doubt something deeply profound that is wordlessly bubbling up out of my subconscious.  Maybe it even has multiple meanings. More to the point, does it mean something to you? Does it resonate with something in your subconscious?

assembling the stretchers

I have been preparing a canvas for a new painting – a commission to paint a scene from the woods in Pennsylvania. I could not start right away. We had such great fall weather, and I was committed to using up every last minute of outdoor painting time.  I had to wait until the weather changed in order to work in the studio. I started on November 14. The first step in preparing a new canvas is the dusty search for the right size stretchers. I have several boxes, each containing a range of sizes. I am never sure that I have exactly what I am looking for.  I try to think ahead and guess what size canvases I might be using, but it varies from season to season, and I shift around a lot. It is very frustrating if I come up short, when I want to paint, I WANT TO PAINT! and I don’t want to start going to stores to get materials. Anyway, I found what I was Continue reading

I have four new paintings in the State of the Art Gallery’s November show:  Olio – a member’s show.  They are small paintings, mostly 12 x 16, except for the Peach trees, which is 12 x 18. They are oil on canvas with palette knife, done outdoors during late September and early October.  It was a marvelous time of subtle change. Each day the world was a little more gold. Green was slowly being replaced by red in all of its wonderful manifestations of pink, orange and purple.

September 29, Peach Trees at Indian Creek Orchards

September 30, Indian Creek

September 28, Sandbank Rd.

October 3, Taughannock Marina.