I am an activist artist. I started painting again after 30 years spent illustrating science because I felt the need to express my concern more personally about the damage humans are doing to the planet and where our culture is heading.

My sculptures and installations focus on the modern ubiquity of plastics and electronics in every aspect of life. We pour staggering volumes of ever-diversifying plastics into the biosphere. The work is largely confessional and consists of discarded plastics; mostly my own, my office, and my neighbors’ discards. These things, so varied in color, texture, weight, purpose, and durability, are now flat and ominous, revealing their fundamental nature: toxic petroleum waste. The immersive and monochromatic work provokes a clearer understanding of plastics and the way our consumer society sees them. We buy and discard so much. These molecules are now in our air, our water, our food and our bodies. The plastic molecules of your shampoo bottle, your cell phone case, will be in the food that your great-great grandchildren eat, in the water they drink.

My paintings employ harmonies of color and pattern as a lure, which on closer examination focus the viewer on the issues of biodiversity loss and climate change. I use elements of fallen leaves and animals cut from newspapers and maps. Headlines of loss and hope swirl. The elements of water and stone are often central. The stones, solid and eternal, have been sculpted by water and time. The water, formless and yielding, is a substance in motion that buoys up, moves objects with it, and transforms earth and stone. When involving the sky, I focus on the fleeting qualities of dusk and dawn, moments of transition/transformation. These are visual poems connecting human actions, our ceaseless flood of news, with the procession of the seasons, the fragility of the planet, the constancy of change, and our search for direction – a way forward.