Harmony Lost. December 2023. Acrylic, oil pastel, chalk pastel, and magazine cuttings on canvas. 24 x 36 inches.
Marine Debris I (submerged). September 2023. Oil, cardboard, denim, poly plastic, magazine cuttings, broken jewelry, emptied tube, cosmetic compact, palette scrapings, thread, and basswood on canvas. 24 x 18 x 4.5 inches.
Marine Debris II (crashing). December 2023. Oil, cardboard, denim, poly plastic, paper towel, broken jewelry, cosmetic compact, and palette scrapings on canvas. 24 x 30 x 5 inches.
Harmony Lost—titled in reference to John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost—depicts humanity’s interruption of the natural world. A chaotic jumble of parsed images, intertwining lines, and streaked color, the portrayed scene is naturesque but far from peaceful. Red tones embody Fall’s changing leaves and fire. Black lines make out distant trees and ominous figures. Collaged media scatters and pollutes. The color palette and motifs illustrate a distortion of nature making Harmony Lost into an overwhelming, immersive, and yet familiar image of the modern natural world.
Marine Debris I (submerged) paints our relationship—those of first world countries—to our pollution. Though it is primarily due to our actions, we view marine debris as newsworthy content and attractive images while others suffer the consequences of our wasteful lifestyle. Marine Debris I (submerged) recreates oceanic garbage patches expressing the contrasting sensations of removal and attachment through strange yet attractive abstraction. As the assembled patches collect and form with the water, familiar materials appear—jewelry, cardboard, fabric, etc. The viewers are made to connect with this familiarity and further contemplate the entire artwork through the contexts and significance of the presented materials.
Continuing to narrate our relationship to our pollution, Marine Debris II (crashing) paints a more violent retelling. The given palette of materials accompanies those in Marine Debris I (submerged) to once again foster the sensations of removal and attachment. However, in this artwork, the water moves faster, the waves crash harder, and the patches of objects scatter. Less so about the collected things, Marine Debris II (crashing) exudes the roughness and tension between pollution and the seas.