The desert … a wasteland of terrifying beauty, with dunes – sometimes 1,000 feet high winding sinuously as far as the eye can see.A place of immense contrasts where the burning sand takes and destroys life.Illusions of water play with the mind.

Water is rarely a reality.

The Assurance of Life    Height 42"  X Width  52"

New paragraph

In 2002, the United Nations resolved that sufficient and safe drinking water is a basic human right.   

1.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean water.

“Everyday, around the world,” according to public-health expert Eileen Stillwaggon:

 “illness related to water supply, waste disposal, and garbage kills 30,000 people and constitutes 75 percent of the illnesses that affect humanity “

“Indeed, digestive-tract diseases arising from poor sanitation and pollution of drinking water – including diarrhea, enteritis, colitis, typhoid, and paratyphoid fevers – are the leading cause of death in the world, affecting mainly infants and small children”
 (From Stillwaggon’s book ‘Stunted Lives, Stagnant Economies’)

By 2025, nearly 50% of the world’s population (at least 3.5 billion people) will face water scarcity.

Nearly 97% of the world’s water is salty; another 2% is locked in icecaps and glaciers … this leaves 1% for all our needs.  

90% of waste water in developing countries is discharged into rivers and streams without any treatment.

Vanishing Waters   Height 38"  X Width 62"

New paragraph

Water, ephemeral and transparent in nature. May we, in our ignorance and greed, never abuse this power in our lives

Paradise Garden    Height  52"  X Width  42"

The Paradise Gardens of Mesopotamia, the rugs of ancient Persia, the Kasbahs of Algeria and Mughal miniatures all center around the image of water.

Water is a virtually universal symbol of purity, rebirth and transformation.

The Club of Rome published their famous report ‘The Limits to Growth ‘’ during the 1970’s and conceptual artists like Robert Smithson and Andy Goldsworthy began dealing with environmental issues.   In subsequent decades, however, as the threat of resource scarcity receded from view, art largely abandoned this engagement with ecology.

Today we again face growing awareness of the limits of resources and the potential for conflict which result from such limits.

The Pool Becomes A Mirror   Height  52"  X  Width 42"

Citizens in affluent nations seldom see beyond the reflections of today’s still waters – where water is easily available - to a world that may be dry and barren.   

We need to try to understand the crucial cleavage between life lived in this world of affluence and unlimited resources and life as it will have to be lived if we continue to disregard the ecological issues facing us.   The industry of water follows closely behind those of oil and electricity.

Although clean water is the cheapest and single most important medicine in the world, public provision of water, like free toilets, often compete with powerful private interests.
Water sales are a lucrative industry in poor cities.

In Nairobi,” where politically connected entrepreneurs resell municipal water (which costs very little to families wealthy enough to afford a tap) in the slums at exorbitant prices, Mberita Katela, a vegetable hawker, walks a quarter mile every morning to buy water in the Kibera slum.   She uses a communal pit latrine just outside her door – shared with 100 of her neighbors” – from Rasna Warah’s book ‘Nairobi’s Slums:  Where Life for Women is Nasty, Brutish and Short’

Trickle Fall    Height   62"  X  Width 38"

Las Vegas, which has the fastest growing metropolitan area in America, located in the most arid desert in North America, uses more water per capita than any other city in the country – 30 million visitors a year pour into the city, having had to cross the desert either by car or plane.

The World Bank has stated that “One way or another, water will soon be moved around the world as oil is now”.  Corporations are now involved in the construction of massive pipelines to carry fresh water long distances for commercial sale, while others are constructing supertankers and giant sealed water bags to transport vast amounts of water across the ocean to paying customers.   The mass movement of bulk water could have catalytic environmental impacts – greater even than China’s Three Gorges Dam.

According to World Water Council Data, much of the Western United States is an area of water stress where the rate of use is high in relation to total renewable resources. Similar stress areas are found in the Sahara, the Middle East and Central Asia.  

Terra Verte II    Height  54"  X  Width  44"

New paragraph

The true Brentonica earth. Semi-transparent, slightly gritty, with a velvet light, soft, light absorbing surface. A delicate green. Not an opaque, olive, or yellowish green.... Georgione's green

Prussian Night    Height  40"  X Width  30"

The day is spent - Evening draws in.

Renaissance Light   Height  52"  X  Width  42"

My use of Renaissance techniques aptly illustrates the  awareness of the transparency of color combined with the inner glow which Renaissance artists achieved. Dr.De Mayerne , physician to Rubens, wrote a manuscript on van Eyck and Ruben's structural methods.  Cennini and Vasari also provided documentation of these techniques

Theater of War     Height  48"  X  Width  60"

Lays waste all that past civilizations have created. How will we answer when our days are done?