When we touch people’s hearts through art and poetry, they will become committed to becoming part of the solution.
Artists, poets, storytellers, and musicians create super-charged narratives that touch, move, and inspire people to action by illustrating important issues in emotionally memorable ways. In this era of social media blitz, alternate narratives are churned out by PR firms to keep the status quo and reinforce the normalcy bias. Artists create bridges through visuals and language for things that are difficult to talk about.
This body of work externalizes the angst we live with on a daily basis. It is this constant undercurrent that I believe is creating stress and helping to undermine the health of all of us including our children.
In this article, I am referencing two of my paintings in my Intergenerational Conscious Conversations of Consequence activist series: If You Could Only SEA, and What Happens When a Coral Reef Dies? These two paintings are about our oceans which take up a large part of the planet.. The other 22 paintings speak to government overreach, global corruption, profits before people and our planet, and industries that are too big to fail.
The same thread runs through every piece. As an example, our oceans are riddled with plastics. Since plastics come from petroleum, you can start to see the thread of unintended consequences set up for us by the oil and gas industry.
The oceans are a very important part of our planet’s huge ecosystem for everything living in and on Mother Earth. An imbalance in our waters represent the decline of our existence as we know it. The oceans produce over half of the world’s oxygen and stores 50% more carbon dioxide that our atmosphere. Oceans cover more than 70% of the world’s surface. They also transports heat from the equator to the poles which regulates climate and weather patterns. Abundant marine life provides food for millions of the planet’s inhabitants.
Tragically, our oceans are polluted with plastics of all kinds and sizes. It is a global problem with no real agreed on solution. Yet, we have specialized equipment for the detection of nanoplastistics – plastics that have broken down to sizes below a thousandth of a millimeter, smaller than a single cell.
Laboratory tests show that unlike microplastics, nanoplastics are small enough to accumulate within the bloodstreams and cell membranes of a range of organisms including humans.
We also now understand that the chemicals that make up plastics can be very dangerous to our health and every ecosystem. Over 4,300 chemicals have likely been used in the plastic’s industry, and no safety studies on the hazards of plastics to humans and animals have been done since 1962.
“As the quantity of plastic humans dump in the ocean has reached obscene proportions, we’re seeing more and more sea life — including birds, otters, sea turtles and fish — choking on it.”
~ Umair Irfan
Poetry, like visual art, touches, moves and inspires. This compounded Haiku by poet, Kelly Gray-Meisner, creates powerful images for us to ponder:
If You Could Only SEA?
by Ruth Westreich
Artist, Activist, Philanthropist