THE DISAPPEARING
The Disappearing Series is a visual statement of Love and heartbreak: a way to observe and honor the loss of earth’s creatures and their homes. A story of beauty lost.
This story awakened in me during an artist residency on Ossabaw Island off the coast of Georgia. Beyond the beach, the dunes and driftwood trees, there is a forest. It was there where I found a Mother Tree, an ancient oak. I wanted to live there, my back pressed against her sturdy, peaceful presence. Every breath brought me closer to a sense of belonging to something larger.
Years later, this story evolved during another artist residency at the Sanskriti Foundation Kendra outside Delhi, India. Traveling along the crowded highways, one sees among other species cows, goats, camels, buffalo and elephants: urban wildlife - and mostly given the right of way. Later, on the same journey in northern Thailand, I had an opportunity to spend time with a group of former working elephants, now rescued. We learned how to care for them and in the process develop a bond, a kinship. There were babies of different ages. The tender mother/child relationship was a joyous life-affirming thing to witness. The elephant family dynamics mirror our own in social complexity, the deep sense of family, and the highly developed emotional range.
At the time, I kept a journal, made a few sketches and took some photos. But I determined very early on to remain present through my direct personal experience with the elephant family and their individual personalities. My Mother/Child elephant series grew out of this direct experience.
So, upon returning home, to NYC at the time, the elephants, in my memory, became a metaphor of our relationship to the earth, an expression of our collective unconscious. I reflected more deeply about the issues of our co-existence and how we need to live now - respectful in a sustainable world. The drawings came unexpectedly out of a passionate need I felt to give the elephants a position as ‘subject’ rather than ‘object’.
“In the gap between subject and object lies the entire misery of humankind.” - Krishnamurti
The drawings are a memory of elephants I have known, especially one: Mae Wan Dee. The elephant family narrative opened a wider focus and vision for my work. Could I speak for more of the disappearing, other species and their homes? The Habitat and Animal Series spring from that desire as I search for the answer to the questions, what can an artist do that has the power to communicate, to be more of an activist for ones beliefs and hopes for the planet. What is my role and what can I offer? What is a memory that inhabits a space that is not mere nostalgia? How can it be transformed from a song for the disappearing into an inspiration for change, an affirmation of life?