About the Work
My narrative paintings depict the changing environment of upstate New York’s Adirondack and Catskill regions. From dying trees and diminished wetlands, to the declining song bird populations: the effects of climate change are apparent. Invasive parasites, loss of habitat, damaging heat and storms have affected all living things.
I layer acrylic paint and graphite on prepared paper or wood panels in compositions stemming from memory and feeling of place. These honor and document a bird in my backyard or a tree on a favorite hiking trail that is dying and will soon fall. Vines, birds and snakes fill larger paintings in a tangle of growth found at field edges.
Often included is a female figure, a witness to the change or a symbolic Mother Nature, traveling this path with a bird or deer, looking at a future of more loss and irreversible changes. Implicit in my work is the sorrow that human activity is responsible for this wave of extinctions. The natural world is waiting for us to figure this out.