Undergrowth
Acrylic on canvas
10 x 8”
500.

About Undergrowth

I painted Undergrowth four years ago when the soon-to-be-familiar pangs of desire for some kind of sanctuary first made themselves known. I was an artist fresh out of college, and not versed in seeing my position as a white, abled person that lives in a societal network high up within the structures of power. My initial thoughts of sanctuary as I made this painting were those of private, individual escapism, creating a new, lush, green world for myself cloistered away from the old.

In the four years that have passed since then, I feel so old and so tired out as everyone else does by these hierarchies, divisions, and violence, but I see a new space that this painting occupies as a node in a network amongst friends and community members who take the time to care for themselves and for each other. Building small gardens of care according to our neighbors’ needs and not just our own is a transcendent and subversive act.