for: #5 Funday Monday blog prompt–

Natural Creative Instincts: An Earth Day Creative Celebration. This week we celebrate Earth Day! How does the natural world influence or inform your creative process?

Nature and my surroundings have always been a source of both literal material and visual  images for my work. In this painting, one gets a sense of being in the night, the moonlight, experiencing the shimmer and the image of the leaf, an actual leaf  embedded in resin. I found this one years ago and love its beauty, even in decay.

I am aware of another kind of decay, our Mother Earth, is showing signs of the abuse we have done to our planet. Its been going on for far too many years, and  is catching up with us. Many of us have been concerned, but there was this sense that any significant negative consequences would be hundreds of years in the future. How grossly untrue, the crisis is now and the window of opportunity to change our course is shrinking.  When I say our course, yes, I mean each choice we make individually, but more impact and the greatest damage has been done by big business and governments who enable these corporations.  I urge you to watch this series : Years of Living Dangerously to experience for yourself the magnitude of this issue and also the measures we can take to turn it around. (*9 part-Series available on ShowTime and youtube).

In my view we have progressed so quickly with our ability to achieve greatly with technology and other advances, but we have not progressed in terms of integrating our hearts with our minds. We would not be at this juncture if that were not so.  Recently at Morehouse college I was honored to hear Karen Armstrong TED talk  award winner, speak on Compassion, a compassionate way of living that links us to each other, a compassionate way that crosses cultural boundaries. Karen found compassion to be the unifying principle in all religions. In my view this is the most powerful, authentic way of being that can turn this potential catastrophe around,  a crisis transformed to opportunity.