16 September, 2024
“The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.”
Sacrifice, detail
My Why
Ever since I was big enough to hold a pencil, I loved to draw. I can remember sitting on the floor, with my paper on the bottom part of one of those midcentury modern two-tiered end tables, happily scribbling away at age three or so. I still get a sense of joy and fulfillment from the process of art-making.
But making art has a greater purpose for me than just my own enjoyment. Art, to me, is a form of communication; I do it because I have something to say - something I feel I can express better through images than through words. Here's how I attempted to explain it on the Gallery page of my website:
"Why am I always going on about interconnection? Because it's the underlying catalyst, theme, and message of all my work. We don't just interact with the natural world, we are nature - every bit as much as a tree, a star, a drop of water, or a fox. If I say that we're made of stardust, or try to explain the 'butterfly effect' (though sometimes I do, in my blog posts), I get bogged down in words. My hope is that the images I create will allow you to not only glimpse this vital truth, but to feel it in a way that goes deeper than the intellect. If everyone truly knew this, how different would our world be?"
Where it All Started
“Deep ecology does not see the world as a collection of isolated objects but rather as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. It recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans—in the celebrated words attributed to Chief Seattle—as just one particular strand in the web of life.”
― Fritjof Capra, The Dao of Physics
I was lucky to grow up in an environment where I was free to spend most of my time outdoors, roaming the local woods, creeks, and hills. I collected fossils and rocks, watched crawdads in the creek, studied butterflies and other insects, climbed trees, planted seeds with my grandmother, and caught lightning bugs in a jar.
The more I learned about science and nature, the more holistic my worldview became. If the roots in the soil weren't part of the soil, they were at the very least inextricably bound to it. Even though the sun was so far away, the plants, and therefore all life on earth, were dependent upon it. With increasing clarity, I became aware of the underlying unity and connectedness of everything in the universe, before I was really old enough to put it into words.
What I Have to Say
My work has always been about nature, going back even as far as high school and college. The two pieces above were done while getting my BFA, and while they're not much like my current work, I think you can see that I was beginning to use natural objects as symbols, combining images to create meaning.
My belief is that my purpose as an artist is to share that sense of oneness, if only in some small way, with the viewer. Art has the power to expose people to new perspectives, because images touch our hearts and minds at a level deeper than words.
Visual expression of the message that we are connected to nature and to one another – and that the connection is real and intimate, not just some ‘theory’ – is increasingly important to our world and our communities. I use a vocabulary of nature-inspired symbols – juxtaposed, fused, and interwoven with humans and each other – in my attempt to reveal that essential mystery. It's not just what I have to say, it's what I have to say.
Fossil Memory (left) and Moon Seed (right), a couple of pieces from the 1990's.
A More Narrow Focus
Sacrifice, monoprint with mixed media, 22.5 x 15 inches
This is the statement I included when Sacrifice was exhibited in the SOS Art: Art for Peace and Justice show last summer:
"As humans continue to disregard the interconnectedness of all things and the importance of biodiversity to the survival of any ecosystem, we are quickly losing untold numbers of animal and plant species. The population of North American birds has dropped nearly 30% since 1970 – a loss of almost three billion birds. We sacrifice these creatures on the altar of our ignorance and greed, driven by a culture of wasteful consumerism. The rubies coming from the blood of the bird symbolize its sacred and precious nature, and also a sense of hope that ultimately a new awakening may come from these sacrifices."
As the climate crisis ramps up, I feel a sense of urgency to focus on specific aspects that I feel I can address in my work. Sacrifice may make some people uncomfortable or sad, as it's meant to. The rubies in the painting, however, are meant to symbolize hope; I refuse to give up hope that we can turn things around and stop driving bird (and other) species to extinction.
Stay tuned, as I will write more about this in future blog posts.
"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."
Wishing you all peace, love, and art!
I have the same focus in my mixed media collages. Two years ago when I created a series of twelve tiny collages for a friend/patron, I tried to explain why I am driven to make art. It turned into a two-page letter. In that exercise I discovered that writing an artist’s statement is not as easy as one would think. It’s hard to put into written words what the subconscious wrestles with. Nowadays (and many collages later) I can sum it up in one sentence: I’m interested in the place where human civilization and culture collide with wild nature.
We are nature! I love your work. The feathers :) The shell :) The one with the bird (robin?)/plants/roots reminds me of a religious painting. St. Robin, bringer of joy and worms. Meredith