CR #6

My original essential question was what stories do the people, plants, and animals of Ditmas Park have to tell? In the end however, it turned into something more like what stories do I have to tell about the people, plants, and animals of Ditmas Park. My project turned into me exploring my alienation from nature through art, in whatever ways I could. 

In many ways, my project was contextualized by the canceling of my original project. I got on a train going to Georgia, I had planned and prepared to spend 8 weeks alone in the wild on the Appalachian Trail. On my way to the trailhead, I made the decision to turn around because of Covid-19 cutting off my food supply. I returned home at a real loss. Being on the trail was what I was working towards. Being in nature. Instead, I chose to find nature in my backyard, in my neighborhood, in New York City. All in all, nature has been the prominent theme in my projects, both the one I planned and the one I ended up doing. 

I didn’t find the words to articulate what exactly it was that was driving my painting, what it was that made me paint the birds and landscapes I could find around me. Not right away at least. It wasn’t until I read John Berger’s Why Look at Animals and watched his Ways of Seeing BBC special. In Why Look at Animals, Berger brings up this idea that modern society has so far removed us, humans, from our animal counterparts, that any look at animals can be nothing more than an exploration or commentary on our alienation from them. We used to be directly connected to the process that used animals and nature for survival, and that gave us a respect for nature and animals. But since the industrial revolution, that process by which we survive is so far removed from us that animals no longer hold the sacred significance that they once did. We are distanced and alienated from them. We are distanced and alienated from nature. Once I had Berger’s words, my experience made sense to me. My desire to go backpacking on the Appalachian Trail and my desire to paint birds and landscapes both stem from this place of me wanting to connect to the natural world.

This is what I was exploring in my paintings. The painting of the birds attacking the church is an almost satirical take on this alienation, and the painting of the bird person watching themselves turn from a natural beast into a human is a more allegorical and personal approach. The paintings of birds were me practicing my skills of observation — of seeing the natural world. And so, in the end, my paintings are telling the story of me working through my alienation from nature, and my attempts to connect with it.

I think my project was a great success. I both expanded my artistic abilities, as well as my intellectual and spiritual understanding of my desire to be in nature. By painting every day, I learned a lot about both oil painting and my own artistic voice, and by painting with the intent of exploring nature, I learned about what the natural world means to me.