How can I use art to add to scientific observation? How do I show meaning greater than words through sketches and how do I show meaning greater than sketches with words? These are the questions I aim to answer in my senior project. My whole life I’ve been drawn outside, I’ve been drawn to the forests and the mountains and I’ve always found intellectual and artistic stimulation in nature’s beauty. For this project, I’d originally planned to go on the Appalachian Trail to find this inspiration, but because of COVID-19, I had to find a way to get that inspiration at home. 

My answer was rather simple. I’m still going to move forward with the mindset of a naturalist, but within the confines of my house.  And I can take advantage of the fact that I’m in my house. I will be (and have been since March 24th) doing an oil painting a day, something that the restrictions of backpacking wouldn’t allow. I’ve found that my backyard is a sort of microcosm for the lives of our animal neighbors. 

In his book The Forest Unseen, David Haskell revisits the same three-foot by three-foot plot of land in the Tennessee woods continuously on the premise that he is better able to understand the entirety of the forest by looking at one small section of it. He calls this plot of land the forest’s mandala because, in some Buddhist interpretations, the whole universe is contained in the mandala. For my project, I wanted to adapt this idea, except instead of the universe, or the Tennessee woods, my backyard mandala encapsulates the Ditmas Park, and more largely, New York City.

My plan is to do in-depth observations of the birds, squirrels, cats, flowers, mosses, trees and people I find in my backyard and neighborhood. I plan to do bird counts in the mornings, overall observations of the environment in my backyard (when new birds migrate through, behavior, when different plants begin showing buds and leaves, what plants different animals congregate around, etc). I will do bird counts by sitting in my backyard at the same time every morning. In my notebook I’ll write each day how many of each bird I count and then will transfer that to a table and a graph inside my house. It will probably take a few days of observation all day to figure out what the best procedure for my observations will be, but I will be sure to update the blog as I figure this out. I also want to count people out my window each day. This will be done with the same procedure as bird counts, which I will also conduct during this time. In my quarantine motivated clean-up, I found an old DSLR camera with a telephoto lens, so I plan to photograph the birds with that to use as reference for paintings, and general identification.

I’ve set up a space in my house where I can do my painting, as well as organize my data about the birds. I will also have space for plant pressings and little samples I find in my backyard (think natural history museum, Brooklyn backyard). I’ve gathered all the materials to do a painting a day. While most of these paintings will be very small — 4 inches by 4 inches — I also have the supplies to do a few larger paintings. I want a majority of my paintings to be open-air paintings (painting what I see), though I don’t want to restrict myself if I come up with an idea apart from what’s physically around me. I also have an assortment of watercolor materials for paintings other than my oil painting a day. I plan to do paintings of birds and other inhabitants of my backyard (my family too). The main challenge of doing a painting a day comes in finding enough interesting things in my environment to fill 50 canvases.