Painting 12 is “Reconcile”, from a new series I’ve titled “The retaliation of Mother Nature”. 8″x8″
This painting and three others I’m working on (not shown) are spawned from the first painting, “The road to Avalon”, in what has now become a series called “The Retaliation of Mother Nature”. I painted The road to Avalon as an abstract landscape. The place doesn’t exist anywhere but in my imagination. But I got to thinking of why I was inclined to paint that because it is not really the norm for me and realized I have been influenced by what has been going on with the chemical spill in West Virginia. Yesterday, as I drove home from taking my son to school I wondered to myself if that will come our way or affect us in any way. It wasn’t but three minutes later when the news came on talking about the spill and said that officials in Cincinnati were preparing for it. Well, that really got my attention as we are maybe five hours from there. Later I heard my area will be testing for it as it is expected to reach us this weekend since the Ohio river was contaminated. Wow.
So, I decided to do a series on what our world would look like without mankind in it. No animals either since we will have killed off the natural resources needed to survive for all of us with polluted skies, land and waters. I guess I could call this my first environmental political statement. This painting in case you couldn’t tell what it was is parts of a bridge that has fallen into water. Foliage has started to grow up and is hanging down off the concrete braces. Bits of the bridge can be seen poking out of the water below.
The environment has always been kept in mind in my day-to-day life. I attempt to be as environmentally friendly as I can and keep my area as unpolluted as I can. I recycle everything I am able to, I try to be organic in my gardening and we own a hybrid car. The problem is, we live in the country with farmlands all around us growing mostly corn, beans and wheat. You may think what is wrong with this, but I have seen first hand what the runoff does. I see the scum and unnatural color my lake has floating on it after a rain and the runoff from the fields come pouring in. I smell the strange chemical smell in the air as I take Asher to school when the factories are doing whatever they’re doing and the wind is just right. The chemicals the farms and factories load into the fields, crops and air ultimately end up on our dinner tables and in our bodies.
I live in southwestern Indiana where the air quality is some of the worst in the US. Cancer statistics are through the roof. I worry what future this will be for my son and his children… for all of our children and their children.
Will we push ourselves into extinction?
Okay, I may be a little dramatic with that, but haven’t you thought about it?
Below are a couple of work in process shots.
It certainly is a scary thing 🙁
I remember when Chernobyl happened a girl friend wouldn’t let her kid drink milk for years, she was so scare of the fall out here on the west coast, I was too young and naive to believe it could be as bad as everyone was making out, but now I am older and more skeptical 🙂
Love the work girl 🙂 T.
Thank you T. I am old enough to take it seriously. When we are young we don’t think about that sort of thing. So many bad things all around us and have been for decades. I appreciate you coming by 🙂
Awesome series… and yes I agree.. it’s very scary.. and I do wonder what all of this will come to in the future… I too do everything I can to recycle and choose but unfortunately we have no control over what others do.. I cringe every time I hear a small plane out spraying whatever it is on their fields..I love Tuna but heard the other day that most caught off the west coast are contaminated by the nuclear waste in the ocean from Japan.. so sad that we cannot be more responsible for ourselves..
Love your paintings.. it’s a beautiful haunting series..
xx
Thank you so much Kathy, I love your description of my paintings having a haunting fell to them. I was going for that, so I’m so happy to know it is picked up on. I know we all wonder what is in store for our children and their children. I had not heard that about the tuna. You have to be very choosy nowadays with what is on the label and not only that, you have to be up on current happenings and the media only hi-lights their agendas. Those small planes you talk about are a common presence here where I live. You can see it floating in the air, God only knows what it’s doing to us and our environment down the line. Only time will tell.