Human Nature #2

Living here in the South Bay CA, our impact on sea life is something we see far too often. Seeing the washed up body of a sea lion or a beached whale is a sight one doesn't forget. This collection hopes to shine more light on what we're doing to our beautiful planet, spark a conversation and perhaps some activism to make things better. I have been obsessed with the image of a beached whale for some time now. Its soft curves limp on land, its usual grace and majesty replaced with stagnant decay. It's a weird thing to me to see people gathered around a dead animal like a whale on a beach, looking at it from all angles, like a piece of art hanging in a gallery; so interested in it. Stopping with friends to have conversations about it and find out who is going to remove it from the beach because it's starting to smell and is ruining the view. So I thought, why not paint it and put it in a gallery? After all, it's a spectacle! Funnily enough, taking the subject off the beach and observing it in a gallery changes the way one perceives it. Some see more beauty, some see an ugly subject matter that, as I've been told, no one wants to see or put on their wall. So why paint it? Because I'm a realist... and this is reality. If the world were all pretty roses, I guess I'd paint that instead!