Air & Sea

Being stuck home in shelter-in-place has given me a lot of perspective; into both my own life and the value in giving the earth a break. I have watched news stories about various environmental mini-miracles such as skies in China being smog-free or the canals in Venice being clear. While I do not live in a place with extreme levels of pollution, I do live in a metropolitan area which typically leads to a disturbing amount of traffic. While I never thought there was much smog, after a few weeks of people staying home due to the shelter-in-place order I was able to see the entire Bay Area from the Stanford Dish (a hiking spot near me). I didn’t just see San Francisco but also Oakland and the tip of Marin. Usually this view is only available on exceptionally clear days but on my multiple hikes before the Dish closed, I could see the entire bay. That experience is what inspired the painting on the left. 

The painting on the right was inspired by an observation about my own life and desires. I wish I could be in the ocean diving right now, so I depicted kelp forests which populate the coastline of California, especially Monterey Bay. Overfishing of apex predators and changing ocean temperatures have led to much of the kelp disappearing in the last several years. These conditions also give sea urchins, an invasive species, a space to thrive as they do not have as many natural predators. The urchins eat the kelp and overtake the area at an alarming rate.

In both paintings, the view in the left eye is what the ideal conditions for that environment is. The view in the right eye is the depiction of what happens when the environment is tampered with by human involvement, even if not directly.

Air

Sea