Inspiration 

The Earth Series

This recent body (Fall 2009) of work is inspired by things growing and changing and the multitude of ironies and paradoxes that is our interaction with the earth. The earth is in jeopardy.  Its cliché to say and ever real, ever present, ever at risk. 

The planet is on the path of becoming inhospitable to humans. David Byrne says in the song Nothing but Flowers  “I miss the honky tonks, Dairy Queens and Seven Elevens…and as things fell apart nobody paid much attention.”  Ironically he was talking about the urban society overtaken by nature not vice versa.

Forests are burning, seas rising, viruses mutating, flowers blooming, towers rising in Dubai and crashing to the earth in a pile of dust and death in Manhattan .  We’re growing grass on rooftops, effectively trying to live underground and reach for the sky simultaneously, harnessing solar energy and wind.  Attempting to leave no trace while radiating the lights of Las Vagas into far away galaxies. Perhaps soon nature may overtake us or perhaps we will overwhelm nature.  Maybe a balance is struck. 

These pieces are all inspired in one way or another by this constant conflict between development and conservation, man and nature, buildings and sky, wind and rain and steel and wood, the elements that harm and those that heal. 

The act of painting with watercolor is analogous to organic systems.  Water, colors created from elements, pigments and minerals, is like a growth, the paint flows from one section to another, uncontrollable at times, representative of nature, earths forces, and paradoxes.  Buildings and trees have personalities, friends or foe?  partners or enemies?