Acrylic, ink, re-harvested PETE plastic on linen (2024)

This piece is now finished. It will be exhibited in Kingston for the month of November (Window Gallery) as part of the OKWA (Organization of Kingston Women Artists) annual show. Here is the statement I wrote in response to the show’s theme, Change:

“Ollie the orangutan was photographed in 1988 for a book about endangered species.  In my painting he is bewildered, palms up in despair, bearing witness to the death and destruction in Gaza over the past year.  This artwork itself has seen much change, originally a dense network of red dots but layer by layer overlaid with paint and buried in plastic rubble, symbolizing the tens of thousands of individual lives lost.  If he is still alive, Ollie is 42 years old.  I show him fading from our view just as these magnificent creatures are vanishing from the world, approaching extinction.”