SERIES: ON REFLECTION

Environmental art depicting man-made disasters and climate change.

Inspiration – finding a pair of safety goggles in the gutter + watching the HBO series dramatizing the Chernobyl disaster.

Walking home I had a clear vision of a girl wearing the goggles, in each of the lenses I imagined two powerful but contradictory images. One of the lens reflecting the image of the burning reactor, the other showing a pristine landscape, a world we would all want to wake up to.

The idea of creating one painting quickly developed into a series, themed around the ecological and environmental disasters that beset us, disasters of our own making.

“Hope” was as important to highlight as the disaster. A reminder that we can all play a part to help turn around climate change and improve our precious environment. Each painting has a balancing element of hope.

Chernobyl

Oil on Canvas | 100cm x 100cm

Watching the series on Chernobyl affected me deeply. The idea of the air we breathe containing an invisible poison, was horrifying. Worse still was the idea that the disaster was man made, and the realisation of how close we had come to a global catastrophe.

“Hope” is depicted with the start of a new dawn, mist rising off fields of dew and a coral coloured sky, nature at its most perfect. 

 

 

Toxic Waste

Oil on Canvas | 100cm x 100cm

In 1951 Dupont started purchasing a “Forever chemical” PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic Acid or C8) for use in the manufacturing of Teflon. Over the ensuing decades they dumped PFOA through outfall pipes into unlined pits which then polluted the local ground water. For the full story watch the brilliant film ‘Dark Waters’.

The sunrise over lakes near where I live is the ‘Hope’ element and a reminder to be conscious of the water we use and how lucky we are to turn on the tap and have safe drinking water.

 

Wildfires

Oil on Canvas | 100cm x 100cm

5 million acres of US woodland were burned in 2021. The fire season smoke from Siberia reached the North Pole for the first time in recorded history. As many as 90 percent of wildland fires in the United States are caused by people. Wildfires are wiping out native chaparral, they are then replaced by the non-native plants that accelerate fires. Habitats are changed and wildlife and insects are driven to move out of the area.

Thriving wildlife in natural surroundings is the “Hope” element in the reflection.

 

Nurdles

Oil on Canvas | 100cm x 100cm

Every year trillions of Nurdles, which are tiny plastic pellets, are washed up on beaches around the world, along with other plastic waste. Nurdles are then ingested by hundreds of marine species who mistake the toxic waste for food. Nurdles have also been nicknamed ‘Mermaid’s Tears’. Distressingly seabirds such as Fulmars, Puffins and Shearwaters have all been found with Nurdles in their bodies.

A perfect crystal clean turquoise sea and soft silky sand is the “Hope” element.

 

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