We have been improperly trained to believe our lives are parallel to Nature, “that tree, that rock, those birds, this bee” rather than intertwined spiritually, physically and mentally as a system. We count our mortal base: TIME, by Nature; the sun, seasons, the beat of our own living hearts and we attempt to repossess our loss of time and place through monetary or material resources; a decidedly futile pursuit. An old adage “You Can’t Take It With You” stands out. I ask the observer, “Can we truly hope to repair or improve our human condition, internally and externally, while wrapped in a shattered ecosystem?” Nature, the gauze and the salve, is pulled to threads and greased with her own sweat. We burn Nature’s gifts as a wick to help count our monetary profits into the night, night after night. The observer should feel one with and sympathize with Nature while acknowledging a darkness, a foreboding existential sense of threat.

I utilize scale, kinesthetic mark-making, extreme contrast and color as powerful ways to draw attention to the human, industrial and tempestuous impact on what may otherwise be manicured, sterile and idyllic subject matter. My goal is always to maintain an extremely physical relationship with my mediums and my content by physically interacting with the environment (hiking, walking, biking etc.) and by using different textures and objects from the natural world to add contrast between elements or unify ideas and across my body of work. The compartmentalization, deconstruction, and profiteering of resources and ideas to create a narrative that we as humans are separate from the Nature of this world and the Cosmos is a decidedly futile pursuit. We are interwoven, all of us, everything. Robert Douglas Bryans