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.
