Art As A Voice For Nature

Climate change and biodiversity loss present unprecedented challenges that put humanity at the brink of extinction. Daily headlines announce the death of our oceans, deforestation on a massive scale, record numbers of fossil fuels emissions, colossal ice melt, alarming biodiversity loss, insect collapse, unprecedented natural disasters, plastic rain, and the list goes on. What is an artist to do? I am just one of many who grieve at the collapse of the very systems that sustain life on our planet. Time spent in nature and creating art are my ways to connect with reality. The series “One” was born as a means to let Nature’s voiceless creatures speak to us; it posits creation as the counterforce to destruction. These images remind us of humanity’s interconnectedness with the rest of life on this planet. They urge humanity to transition from an anthropocentric to a biocentric view of the world, where humans cease to control, oppress, and dominate the biosphere and instead promote the larger community of life on the planet. As the great cultural historian Berry Thomas observed, “We will go into the future as a single sacred community, or we will all perish in the desert.”