Art of Warning ◊ Art of Witness

Mary Ciani

Art of Warning: A decade ago, Mary Ciani’s work radically changed when the world changed around her as nearby Bastrop burned and Harvey swirled over a hot Gulf and slammed into Houston. She changed subject, medium, and palette. She turned from symbolic lives lived in time in oil and digital paintings of Vines, Map Mountain Moon, I-Thou, and Ladders, to a wider view: our destruction of our one home. As glaciers melted she drew the Flood Drawings. When climate disasters struck world wide, and the cause and effect of the climate crisis became clearer, she painted Deluge Paintings in Golden paints, mostly black and red, flowing oil and blood, cause and effect. Postcards from the Future, 150 small red and black drawings, one a day, on Italian watercolor paper are mailed back to us as warnings.

Art of Witness: What we once feared is now upon us. While continuing the Deluge Paintings, enormous fires ignited Australia, Canada, Texas, and California, and man-made “summers” became hell. So the palette changed again, to yellow and cerise – the colors of heat – for another series, Too Hot! Nos our weather is a pendulum swinging from tropical rains that flood and grow plants, to long droughts and heat that turn all to tinder. What can we do? What will we do? Why do we not do it?

Mary Ciani enters an arena of artists making urgent images that cut through the noise of pop culture and lies. From her studio in Texas she looks out to doves and cardinals, a pond and bamboo forest, but sees only deluge, oil, blood, heat, and fire.

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