Art of Warning

Art of Witness

Mary Ciani

I play a game of motion, balance, and tension; color, dream, and emotion: prophetic images that echo across canvas or paper. My work radically changed in subject, medium, and palette as the world changed around us, as ancient polar ice melted, and seas rose, and Harvey swirled over a hot Gulf and slammed into Houston. I drew back from my usual work – visual metaphors of lives lived in time – to a wider view: the life and death of the planet. I once wrote Earth Prayer, and now I honored that poem with 300 greyscale Flood Drawings of River, Village, City, Storm, and Deluge, and then reseda green or blue Deluge Paintings of water, storm, and flood.

This Art of Warning became an Art of Witness when what we once feared now came upon us. The black ichor of oil and the red blood of sacrifice flowed down vertical canvases in later Deluge Paintings. Postcards from the Future are warnings mailed back to us, small daily drawings in black and red on Fabriano watercolor paper – images as dangerous as cryptonite . After Los Angeles burned Fire Paintings required hot colors of cerise and yellow.

I join others cutting through the noise of pop culture to the heart of the matter: our survival of a petroleum-based civilization – a mirage, a deception – that creates great wealth and comfort, but also turbocharges weather, burns the earth, clothes it with pollution, and kills the host planet. This is my subject, a subject hard to paint, but anger propels. Always I wish for the reenchantment of art and the ecological perspective that Suzy Gablic wrote about decades ago.

What I see now. From my studio in Texas, I look out to a view of doves and cardinals, pond and bamboo forest, but see only deluge, oil, blood, and fire.

Deluge, Black Oil, Snowmelt, Shattering Rock, 4’ x 12’ Polyptych of four 4’ x 3’ canvases, Golden paints, 2020-2024