My painting will be gouache and perhaps ink on paper, in the realm of 18x24in. to 20x30in., framed proportionately within the 24x36in. limit.

I’ve had some version of this piece in mind for a while, and now feels like the right time for it. I’ve spent the spring and summer of this year observing my garden as usual, alarmed at how few insects I see. I’ve been reading news regarding the worldwide collapse of the insect population for a few years, and seeing it in miniature on my small property feels quite bleak.

However, I’m quite practiced at putting my foot on the doom-spiral. I keep adding native plants and learning as best I can to be a good steward to my corner of the world, daydreaming of bigger projects and what it would take to build them into reality. Even if on some over-arching, mathematical metric, it doesn’t make much of a dent, I still believe it’s worth it to be a nuisance to our problems while we’re still here.

I’ve wanted to paint common milkweed for a couple of years now, after observing a probably 3ft. square patch growing incongruously on a median on Melrose Ave. I passed by it several times that summer, surprised and delighted to see that no one had removed it, see it bloom and thrive, such as it was. To my knowledge, it didn’t return in following years. But I think of it often as an act of chance defiance, and implicitly, compassion. Someone was clearly mowing around the patch, and chose to let the flowers stay. Nature as we have known it will not save itself; death is widespread and already here. But nature’s creatures are also very, very stubborn. I keep hope in my heart for the tenacity of countless unseen lives and that we will witness their descendants. I am heartened to see more discussion and awareness of native plants and insects, and the monarch butterfly is becoming something of a poster child for insect conservation, like the panda is for mammals. In future works I’d like to highlight more niche critters, but monarchs are perfect for this one, as common milkweed is one of their host plants, long considered an aggressive nuisance by many people.

The most lasting effect of reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is how it’s broadened my perception of nature, and life broadly speaking. In the past, my gut reaction to learning of the effects of climate change etc. was to yearn for some prior era where none of this was a problem, or as big of one, if only we could go back. It would be lovely, but nature has also never been static. The death humanity has visited on ourselves and the rest of nature’s creatures is real and requires mourning, but the book helps me, in many small moments, to come to terms with and hope for a future in which some version of us limps out of it, transformed but still here. There may never again be the number of monarchs migrating south as described in ch. 14. but we see them doing their best even now.

Art is oddly both personal and communal; anyone viewing it is brought into the experience. My natural aesthetic tends toward soft and romantic. How to show the beauty I see in flowers and nature’s creatures without romanticizing them overly much, keeping in mind our current reality and my own deep feelings about it, has been a question I’ve wrestled with for a long time. Of course not every painting needs to be serious and carry an important message, but there are times I’d like for it to, like for this exhibition. Making sadness the focus feels too heavy-handed for me, personally. Everyone knows the situation is dire, they don’t need me to depress and alienate them further from contemplation and, hopefully, action. Most of the time, I, too, lean into the escapism of beautiful imagery for my own sake. I know the impulse well. And so I’ve been mulling over what kinds of techniques I might use to thread that needle for this upcoming piece.

That the above is quite challenging!

None presently anticipated.

DCJ – Do Not Pay
This is covered under the artist residency