Painting in Place:
Paying Tribute to Nature in a Windigo World
Oil Paintings by Elizabeth MacFarland
Widlund Gallery, Tannery Pond Community Center, 228 Main Street, North Creek, NY
February 29th - August 30th 2020, Reception August 7th, 5-7 pm
Windigo World
2019
Oil on canvas, 18” x 36”
Most of my recent paintings have been done within a few miles radius of where I live in the northern Catskills. I find inspiration and interest all around me without going far. In this way, I practice standing still and learn to see the treasures of the natural world right in front of me.
For a long time I have been concerned about the impact humans are having on the earth. Ten years ago I completed a large painting dealing with this subject, The Sorrow of Sophia. Since then, the climate crisis has only worsened. My recent painting Windigo World arose from my subconscious as I looked at a thread of quartz in a large rock. The Windigo is a greedy and insatiably hungry cannibalistic creature in Native American mythology (Ojibwe, Cree, and Anishinaabe) that stalks humans in the deep cold of winter. It has become a symbol of greed and selfish disregard for the well-being of society and the earth. We have been treating the earth as if her resources are limitless, created just for human consumption. We have greedily consumed and consumed, like the hungry Windigo, and now we are reaping the consequences, as evidenced by the Climate Emergency we now face.
We can and must live our lives in better relationship with the natural world: within nature instead of outside of it. The need for endless economic growth, what I refer to as our Windigo World, comes at a great cost: the depletion of the wealth and health of earth’s ecosystems.
It is my hope that my paintings can serve as a window into the treasures we still have, and also perhaps as a call to protect those we are poised to lose.
A portion of all sales will go to benefit environmental causes.