Building a New Series of Paintings

One of many sketches in preparation for my new series.

I’m building a new series of paintings and I can’t wait to share them with you. In the meantime, I’d love to share some some of my thoughts about the work. This new series is inspired chiefly by the work of poets, farmers, and scientists who are addressing environmental loss and climate change.

My new series of paintings is heavily influenced by Joanna Macy’s incredible work as an activist and author focused on what she calls “The Great Turning”. My new pieces are also in dialogue the work of Dr. Jennifer Atkinson, an author and professor at the University of Washington. She has a wonderful new podcast called Facing It that addresses eco-anxiety and climate grief. (Full disclosure: Jennifer is also my step-sister and she is ridiculously brilliant.) And my new work is also deeply connected to a poem by Marie Howe called Singularity (more about that below).

This week my 12 year old mentioned that every summer of his life — that’s 2007 until now — has been the hottest on record. Each after each growing steadily hotter. Friends of mine who live in the northern most part of Scotland have mentioned that in the past few summers they’ve seen new species of butterflies that are extending thier northern migratory pattern based of temperature. Of course, its lovely to see the butterflies, but if they go too far north, they are unable to make it back in time to their southern breeding grounds, thereby wiping out that generation. This new series of paintings is my way of personally processing the mix of deep grief and hope I feel about our changing climate. It is also a way to communicate our sacred interconnectedness and the precarious nature of this moment in history.

I’ll be sharing more soon. In the meantime, I’ve recorded the poem, Singularity, as an audio file below. (I always feel so much more connected to folks when I can hear their voices.) Enjoy!

Singularity
by Marie Howe

(after Stephen Hawking)

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.   Remember?
There was no   Nature.    No
 them.   No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were
— when we were ocean    and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all — nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb      no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All   everything   home