Birds of Paradise — Scenes to an End

This series was created for my first solo show, Scenes to an End.

Scenes to an End began as a meditation on bird of paradise flowers. What emerged, especially in the strangeness of the figures, is a product of mixed feelings and mixed priorities. The absurdity of painting biomorphic flowers with a computer mouse is reflected in their forms, somewhere between flower and pointer.

I have the sense that I exist very near the end of our world, and I think many of us share this sense. We recognize the urgent need to restore the Earth, to resist the slavish pursuit of profit and reorganize our world around natural systems. We also recognize the near impossibility of our task—we are subject to alien forces, bound like a train to its tracks, and the companies which most rapidly destroy the Earth are legally compelled to continue destroying it.

The rest of us have been forced into unsustainable forms of survival, trapped between our natural and economic needs.

Even if we had the unlimited time and energy needed to resist the total destruction of the planet, most people would still feel limited to digital pseudo-participation in that resistance, forever fighting in the comment section where there is no ground to win.

Can we click our way to a better world? (If we could, do you think they would let us?)

This series is a tribute to those mad few who have found the will to continue believing in a better world.