Edges

“Salt March” 60”x20” oil on linen 1994

I come to the shore for answers about how things fit together. My mind starts as a blank canvas. I am interested in all kinds of edges and boundaries- between disciplines, peoples, languages and between habitats. An edge is what defines the space in between where we may find our interdependence with all other life. Between habitats, ecotones define where species negotiate space. The edge that has preoccupied me more than any others since 1989 is the ecotone at the edge of water that advances from the sea onto the shores of this island. My studio is 3’ from deep water and looks out on Narrows Island. For 32 years, I’ve sat in the same rocking chair and meditated on where the tides come in and out on the rocks as the light constantly shifts and mutates before my eyes. My question is, how can art best respond to the forces determining ecological change around the globe?

It’s tempting to just try to reproduce the view with pigment in a trance of sublime beauty. The forms and colors are seductive and awesome. I try to exert self-discipline with each mark of my brush but I often succumb to the passion of engagement. Later I might regret my impatient, impetuous and disorderly attack on the pristine surface. But sometimes those are my best paintings.

I can see how global warming is incrementally changing the plants and animals. In a big storm, like one we had in 1994, each time I see how much further the waves wash between the piers under my studio floor. That’s different and more terrifying than routine sea level rise, which is harder to see from day to day. I imagine my studio washing away in rough seas to Portugal as some sort of ultimate metaphor of ecological art.

As I contemplate the view and the threat, I meditate on how change happens. Waves of thought, like water on rocks, answer my questions.

What I know about physics and environmental science drifts through my mind like clouds, assembling themselves into concrete thoughts, before they too mutate and drift away like the water.

All my work since I came to this island in 1989 comes down to what has surfaced as I sit there. It’s like studying an algebraic formula: each brush mark is as loaded with data as pigment. Each new finished work, evokes new questions, returning me to my ignorance like the bare sea floor revealed as the tide pull out.