Oil Spill Paintings

Portal, 12" x 12" oil on panel

Oil Spill Series (on canvas):

#1, 14" x 16"

#2, 15" x 10"

#3, 10"x 10"

#4, 10" x 16"

It's hard to be very optimistic about oil spills. The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico by BP is on every one's minds. It has marked our thinking about oil consumption even for proponents of offshore drilling. Marked, marred, these are minor words to describe the devastation of so viscous a substance, an expansive, coagulating dark shadow, a creeping blob from a horror movie. I will be deeply, continuously saddened if I dwell on it beyond the news so making these paintings is a way of putting it through myself then outside myself. The concept is an erasure of landscape not by white space but by this enveloping, black mass. Openings shrink like the Warner Brother's Looney Tunes cartoon tunnel/shrinking circle, the one with Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig looking out. Porthole was painted first, before the spill. I like the circle of light made by a window in a boat and the horizon dividing, splitting and simultaneously binding the sky and water. Visually, portholes are a lot like stained glass. Porthole can also be read as a part of this series. The paintings #2 and #4 reference water, #1 and #3 land. The black in the paintings is sticky and it presses in on the water in #3.

In 2006 I painted Homage to Al Gore in which I write, "I see me and the world disappears." My intent was to comment on the way self-absorption can be like wearing blinders against our environmental impact and that non-sight (opposite of insight, opposite of painting which requires vision and reflection) can directly make flora and fauna disappear. Non-sight is a blank, an erasure. So much of conservation relies on getting the message out, MAKING VISIBLE what is at stake, what will be gone unless there is change. The website If It Was My Home allows one to visualize how the spill would look over the area where you live.

While we are in control of how we speak out, vote, and our personal consumption, it is an outrage when large companies are negligent. We lose control at that point and it feels like the oil has gotten away from us as we stand on the shore powerless, experts disagreeing on clean up methods.

www.terrapass.com gives us ways to take back some control and take responsibility, by attempting to make up for our fuel use by funding correlating carbon reduction projects. You can calculate your carbon footprint for your vehicle, flights, and home here.

I'll have something more chirpy for you next week.