Winter Roots

Roots series Winter Spring Summer and Autumn each canvas is 48 x 36” © 2018. On April 4 2014 I attended a talk at Cooper Union NYC entitled Nature as Measure: What’s the Future of Farming? presented by The Land Institute and the Berry Center. I was so inspired by the work of Wes Jackson being done at The Land Institute and the poetic common sense of Wendell Berry that I painted what a Kansas meadow could look like with a fully developed perennial polyculture. The work of the Land Institute in Kansas inspired this series of paintings. The institute is creating a new agriculture informed by nature. This system produces food while preserving biodiversity by creating perennial polyculture food crops with twenty foot deep roots instead of merely two foot deep roots. This builds precious topsoil. Life continues underground through all seasons. There are blessings scribed in the roots and woven throughout the seasons. Spring Summer and Autumn contain eighteen honeybees. The number 18 signifies blessings and good fortune in many cultures. Earth from Kansas is blended into the brown umber paint surrounding the roots in each panel. Plants included in the Roots paintings are apple trees bee balm bind weed black-eyed susan clover crocus daffodilis daisy Echinacea forget-me-not hawthorne tree hyacinth iris Kernza Wheat lupine milk weed nettle perennial sorghum plantain thistle tulips salvia spiderwort snowdrops sunflowers and yarrow.

• Acrylic On Canvas
• 48 x 36 x 1.5