Our oceans hold more than 96% of the earths water; the rest is found in our soil, streams, rivers, lakes, glaciers, and snow fields, as well as in our atmosphere in the form of rain, vapor and clouds. As current custodians of this earth it is our job to keep our waters clean, free of debris and chemicals, and to respect and maintain the delicate life balance among our aquatic organisms. Without water, there would be no life on earth.
The sixty photos in my water project have been culled from our travels which began in 2009. Fast forward to 2019, when I said to my husband Gus Winter, "This is it, we are done! these trips are just too tough!" On cue, Covid set in. So we hung up our traveling shoes, but not without regret as Gus had siblings and their families in the Netherlands, and I extended family in Sweden and England
During this long time of isolation, I sorted through my travel photos and noticed that so many focused on water; little water, big water, streams, lakes, rivers, seas and oceans, snowfields and clouds. Indeed, water had always fascinated me… We crossed the Atlantic Ocean, sailed the ancient Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Baltic, and the North Sea. We had flown around Mt Denali in Alaska, witnessed glaciers in Alaska and Patagonia, and even walked on the Langjokull Glacier in Iceland. We circumnavigated South America and explored interior locations such as Iguazu Falls, which is the largest waterfall system in the world; and walked the snowfield of the Orsono Volcano in Chile.
As an artist, I wanted to create a project with these photos; the result is World Waters, a fifteen minute video of a revolving earth which spins out each of sixty photos of sequential manifestations of water, outtakes of which are seen on my web splash page. The sixty photos themselves are found under World Waters. In addition, I also wanted to paint. I have challenged myself to create sixty paintings based on each water photo. My final project will consist of the video as a wall projection surrounded by sixty paintings displayed three deep and twenty long, extending a distance of thirty five feet.
