What Drives My Creativity: An Inside Look
My work is motivated by plastic pollution and littering, and I use my paintings to spread awareness on the effects on our planet and animals. Spreading awareness is just step one in tackling this issue that is why any sales make I donate a portion to charities that help clear our oceans. I also arrange for a tree to be planted in the Amazon Rainforest through One Tree Planted - aiding reforestation.
Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental issues of our time.
Since the 1950s over 8.3 billion tons of plastic has been created due to the mass production and adoption of the diverse material. Of the 8.3 billion tons, only nine percent has been recycled, with the rest in landfill or even worse. Every year, it’s estimated that 8 million tons enter our oceans leading to the harm of our marine life and their ecosystems.
Our throwaway culture’s relationship with single-use plastic is so damaging, something that is used for just minutes (or less) such as a shopping bag is then left on our planet for over 500 years! We need to act on this now.
In recent years thanks to TV programmes such as David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet and Blue Planet and the eco/vegan movement on social media more and more people are starting to think about and see the effects that these kinds of pollution have on our planet. It’s important we all work together and spread awareness where we can and each do our part to aid the end result which is a healthier planter.
Inspiration
I have been pursuing this art-based mission for over a year now and wanted to share some of my inspiration for some of my favourite pieces.
Whale Food
Acrylic paint on watercolour paper finished with pencil crayons and white gel pen.
I was inspired by the sad editorial piece I found about a dead whale that washed up in the Philippines that had 40kg of plastic bags in its stomach.
Some pieces of plastic enter our ocean and look a lot like food to marine animals which end up blocking their stomach and leaving them to starve.
Drifting Seahorse and Balloon
Acrylic paint on stretched canvas
Seahorses use floating objects to ride the ocean currents. It's usually grasses and other organic matter but as more and more plastic finds its way into the oceans, sights like this will be ever more present.
I was inspired by the well-known photograph taken by Justin Hofman and featured in National Geographic. This was taken when Justin was leading an expedition through Indonesian Borneo. This sad image has stayed with me since I read the blog post in 2017. Indonesia’s currents pull water from a gyre known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch*, which may contribute to the amount of plastic found in the country’s waters.
*The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 1.6 million square kilometres which lies between Hawaii and California and is said to be bigger than Texas and holds a MASSIVE 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that weighs an estimated 80,000 tonnes.
Ghost net Narwhal
Acrylic paint on recycled paper finished with pencil crayons.
Ghost nets and other commercial fishing equipment make up 10% of ocean plastic pollution. Ghost gear usually consist of lost or dumped fishing nets which create a cycle of death. They hang around in the water and become weighed down from trapped marine life and drop to the ocean floor. Once the trapped animals are eaten the nets become lighter and float back up to collect more victims. This happens over and over again until it hooks onto coral and breaks down into toxic microplastics or collected through human intervention.
Urban Litter Owl
Acrylic paint on collected litter
My newest collection, ‘Urban animals and the litter they live with’ are painted on litter picked by me on one of our litter picks. They are then sorted, cleaned and sanitised before being given a second life and home. Each piece is glued to recycled card and then fitted to an 8X6 inch white mount ready to be put in a frame. This project was bubbling under the surface over a few litter picks until I saw a Buzz sweet packet and decided to put it in a separate bag to take home and wash to experiment with. This seemed like a great idea to me because it means there is one less piece of litter on the floor and another bit of art in the world.
I painted this on a discarded Richmond sausages packet I found in a bush on a litter pick. I left all the juicy details on there too.
I really enjoyed painting this barn owl. There is something very sentient about their expression that makes you think they are much older than they seem.
I don’t think they know it, but owls are actually doing their bit for their environment. They make very little noise when they fly so researchers at Cambridge University teamed up with a couple institutions in the States to develop a coating that mimicked the aerodynamic qualities of their plumage in order to minimise noise in on-shore wind turbines which are heavily ‘braked’ to reduce noise pollution. The braking makes the turbines less efficient. So well done owls everywhere…and the researchers.
Obviously each piece has a story. You can read more about the individual artwork on their respected page here.
Connect with me on my socials and lets change the world together!