On exhibit at Wild Hearts Gallery in Placitas, NM
July 29-August 25, 2019

Artist’s statement

If you don’t believe the climate is changing, take a trip to any American Western National Park.

Go in the summer, when a choking smoky haze burns your eyes. Or just avoid going outside at home, a thousand miles away, because the air quality is impacted by those wildfires.
Revisit a beloved mountain and wonder at the new snow pattern after a fire. Go back to a favorite campground and find it barren of shade. Colorful wildflowers are beautiful but they won’t shelter your tent.

Wade through the mud and climb over debris left by a flash flood that devastated a tiny community after its forest burned. Pull a battered Torah out of the mud and place it by your door to remember the power of water.

Peel the bark off a dead tree to find intricate channels left by busy bark beetle larvae.

Yes, there is a beauty in death. Georgia O’Keeffe found it in the bones of drought-killed cattle.

I see it in dead trees.

And weep for what we are losing.

Observation:

In July 2018 we took a road trip from New Mexico to Whidbey Island. Most of it was on “blue highways” and unpaved roads, through National Parks and forests. Temperatures across the West were above “normal.” Some broke records. Major forest fires raged in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Northern California, and Montana. A smoky haze filtered out the blue sky and irritated our eyes and lungs. Glacier National Park was clogged with families rushing to see what is left of the glaciers. Everywhere we saw dead and dying trees.

I pondered the changes in our forests over the past few decades: our loss of millions of piñons, ponderosas, spruce and fir. How can we ignore this?

This body of work is a response to my question:  “What is happening and how bad is it?”
Ask the Trees.

Process:

“When you learn to paint a dead tree, you can paint anything.”
—Marie Utt Hoal, my 7th grade art teacher.
I’m still learning.

In considering this question, I decided to explore different media starting with Rozome, a Japanese technique of layering dye resisted by wax on silk. I continued with cold wax and oil on art panel. Finally I decided to allow the trees themselves to speak. Peeling the bark from beetle-killed saplings revealed intricate tunnels (galleries) as lovely to me as illuminated manuscripts or elaborate tattoos, their meaning unfiltered by human language or image-making. These pieces contain the tree’s life history from seedling to death due to warmer temperatures, drought and insects.

Ask the Trees.

—Dorothy Bunny Bowen, July 2019

Interview by Clark Condé in Alibi Magazine, August 8 2019

These are details of some of the pieces in the show; To see the full piece click on the images.

All images © Dorothy Bunny Bowen