This series of paintings investigate the Dakota Access Pipeline and the protests against the massive oil project. My reaction to these events is reflected through many thin layers of acrylic paint, collaged paper, image transfers, and found objects.
Each piece was created on a nine by tweleve inch wood panel in 2017.
Both Sip Wine, Not Water and Who Owns a Big Business Company? both delve into capitalism and conspicuous wealth. Juxtaposing an attractive landscape with the ways in which dependency on oil is harming the environment, I investigate consumerism in our society.
Using the motif of red and white stripes from the American flag, in Coming Down, I depict some protesters at Standing Rock and a hand-drawn pipeline in charcoal, highlighting the likely environmental damage it will cause.
A blue ski radiates out from an image of a tipi above a pipeline running through the ground and simple drawings of the bones of long gone ancestors in Over their Dead Bodies. This work investigates lineage, the natural world, and who is acting as a steward to the land.
Cut depicts the earth being cut and destroyed as pipelines are installed. A large backhoe dwarfs the workers on the ground guiding the network of pipes into place.
Like Oil and Water is a common saying describing two people or things that will never get along. It refers to the physical properties of oil and water that cause them to immediately separate. In a literal sense, because of the probability of oil leaking from the pipelines into the aquifers that contain drinking water, the oil and water will never be compatible.
At the protests in Standing Rock, South Dakota, authorities chased youth on horseback with rubber bullets and canisters. One person was shot off a horse. Two horses were shot, one horse died, and two more hoses were unaccounted for. Dead Horse, is my reaction to this extreme violence at a peaceful protest.
The media has done its best to keep this story out of the news. In my research, I could not find any other information about what happened to the missing horses.
Investigating the trade of oil and other commodities in a global world has its own implications which I examine in China Needs Oil Too. While free trade is encouraged, private industry ships petroleum products worldwide despite the environmental effects.
The main stream media continues to vilify and “other” the Native Americans who are leading the environmental movement and standing up for the health and well being of people across America. Made in America explores these stereotypical notions and asks “what it means to be an American?”
In One Hundred Years is a hopeful depiction of a lush green landscape. A broken pipeline runs through the ground emitting only a few final drips of oil. With certainty, humans will adapt and find better sources of energy in the near future.
