Climate-grief is a reality that we tend not to talk about. However, it is nearly impossible not to experience climate grief listening to or watching reports of natural disasters such as fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, sweltering uninhabitable temperatures. Certainly, the image of a kangaroo running helplessly in one of the Australian fires can bring on grief. I know it has for me. It’s been reported that more than 1 billion animals have been destroyed by Australian fires. In this post, I want to discuss climate grief, and its implications for our societies.
One of the articles I read this week was from the Health and Science weekly email I receive from the Los Angeles Times. It was a story about an artist from Portland, Oregon. This is an artist who doesn’t simply paint beautiful landscapes, but rather has focused on landscapes that are being transformed by climate change.
Daniela Molnar is is a visual artist, poet, wilderness guide, and professor. Molnar founded and directs the Art + Ecology program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at Warren Wilson College. She grew up in the NYC area, a daughter of immigrants, and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
According to Julia Rosen, author of the article in the LA Times entitled An artist set out to paint climate change. She ended up on a journey through grief, many artists are bearing witness to environmental changes unfolding in our time. Some have created political works that evoke outrage or guilt. Still others paint to show the beauty of the world. And many others think about how they can deal with climate-stress through their art.
Painting Attention to Climate Change, and Climate-Grief
When I read the article I was fascinated by Daniela Molnar’s work, not just her painting. She says that her goal of painting newly revealed landscapes by the melting of Eliot Glacier on Mt. Hood, was to draw attention to climate change.
I taught earth science, and geology as a high school teacher and college professor. I’ve studied glaciation of North America, and have spent a lot of time in the Colorado Rockies teaching geology, and simply being there. I’ve seen a myriad of mountain glaciers, and now when I see them I’ll think of Molnar’s work. I’ve also started to paint and after four years, have learned to appreciate the work of artists a lot more than I had at an earlier age. As a result, I was interested in her work.
Journey into Climate-Grief
Rosen captures Molnar’s journey into the grief brought about by climate change. In short, here is what she has to say:
Her goal, initially, was to draw attention to climate change and give shape to an often-abstract issue. On an impulse, she painted the outlines of other diminished North American glaciers over the first, the geometries and hues piling up like scraps of tulle (lightweight, very fine netting).“I didn’t know where this was going,” Molnar recalled. The work grew more chaotic and the shapes, in their jaggedness, faintly violent. She too grew more overwhelmed and confused. After Molnar had created more paintings of vanishing ice, it hit her: this is what it feels like to try to hold the enormous losses brought about by climate change (emphasis, mine).
Citation: Rosen, J. (2020, January 11). An artist set out to paint climate change. She ended up on a journey through grief. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://www.latimes.com/
Molnar’s Art
Although I can’t show you samples of her work, I’ll direct you to some of her paintings. Molnar created a series of new landscapes formed by the melting of mountain glaciers. She calls her climate change series, New Earth. Above all, through it she explores the nature of climate-grief. She writes this about the series.
This series envisions how climate change is reshaping our planet and our embodied experience of it. The shapes in the paintings map newly exposed ground near glaciers. This is land that used to be permanently covered by a glacier that is now uncovered. This new earth is like a wound, or new, delicate skin that has formed over a wound and is now (ready or not) exposed to the world. I began the series thinking that I was making paintings that might help explicate climate change through sensory experience, make it more real by making it visible.
But the more I worked on it, the more I found that these paintings are as much — or more — about confusion as they are about clarity. They are as much about unknowing as they are about knowing. The paintings are presenting visual information gained from scientific sources. To find these shapes, I relied heavily on NASA satellite images and data-based projections. But the visual information is overlaid in such a way as to create difficulty in apprehending any one section or shape. The information swims together into composite shapes, the colors overlapping to form new colors. This reflects the fundamental interconnectedness of all life, all locales, the way that a glacier calving in Greenland causes the ocean to rise in the Marshall Islands.
Molnar, D. (n.d.). New Earth 15. Retrieved January 21, 2020, from http://www.danielamolnar.com/project/new-earth/new-earth-15/?cat=artwork#1
Molnar adds this to her explanation of the feelings associated with climate change. “It also reflects the overwhelming confusion most of us feel in response to climate change. The glut of information available to us often results in feeling flooded and therefore less, rather than more, informed. We’ve been taught to structure information hierarchically, to parse history into nations, time periods. Climate change eradicates those helpful boundaries. There are no limits, no parameters, no political boundaries, no temporal boundaries… Please read more about this series here.” Citation: Molnar, D. (n.d.). New Earth 15. Retrieved January 21, 2020, from http://www.danielamolnar.com/project/new-earth/new-earth-15/?cat=artwork#1
The World’s Youth and Climate-Grief
What if we looked at the work of the world’s youth as seen through the eyes of Greta Thornberg? Firstly, I’ve written extensively about the climate-action movement led by Greta Thornburg and many other teens. One could argue that the youth of the world are vocalizing their grief of how climate change is not only impacting their life now, but their dreams for their’s and other’s futures. But, too many adults seem to dismiss their passion and caulk it up to youthful day dreaming.
I don’t think it is a day dream. It’s more of a nightmare. The psychological affects of climate change and global warming have more serious consequences for teenagers and young adults than we realize.
There is clear and present climate threat that is creating havoc for all living things on the Earth, and changing the very nature of the environment that living things live within. The melting glaciers’ landscapes that artist Daniela Molnar paints, bear witness to climate change, to climate-grief.
When hurricane Harvey destroyed thousands of homes and forced people to flea and seek shelter, I felt climate-grief that they must have been experiencing. Consequently, I created four paintings, two of which are within this post. One of the paintings shows a family fleeing along a flooded street. The young boy’s expression and body motion shows the fear he is experiencing as a result of this devastating storm.
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