In the Mangroves

2010
21 x 34in
acrylic on masonite

My work can be divided into two basic themes:  Agricultural (the world of the known for me, the farmer, where I map out, plan, order and plant everything, exerting as much control as possible), and the wild places such as Tropical America (the world of the unknown, where I am just an observer).  Both worlds have their own attendant anxieties to resolve for me.  Even though I know my world as a farmer, all my work can be erased by a single weather-related event so large as to almost defy comprehension, certainly on a scale that puts one’s significance on a humbling level on a regular basis.  Perhaps there is no more weather dependant job than that of a farmer.  

  When I travel to the tropics, I am immersed in a world completely opposite to the world I spend so much of my life in.  Here are relatively intact ecosystems of incredibly complex biodiversity, and the tropics has allowed remarkable speciation of all forms of life, creating the most complex web of life on the planet, with numerous examples of supremely finely adapted interrelationships between organisms and the environment they live in. The incredibly dense jungles exist unto themselves, and we are but observers to the processes of life that play out there.  Consequently, one must (or should) have one’s wits about oneself when moving through such impenetrable, vast, and unknown terrain.

  This latter sentiment was at the forefront when I painted In The Mangroves.  The bird is an American Pygmy Kingfisher, a diminutive jewel that lights up the dark tangles it fishes from, with it’s iridescent coloring.  This bird, if you’re lucky enough to find one, has little regard for humans, and will blithely go about it’s business of living while people stand a meter away.  For me it’s a great example of how life in the tropics exists for its own benefit, not ours. Down here, we are outsiders, out of our element, especially in somewhere as tangled and foreboding as a the Red Mangrove forest I’ve painted the bird in.  As dark and potentially dangerous this environment is, I for one am awed by it and find it endlessly fascinating and worthy of our appreciation.