Painting bees and beekeepers came as I got bored rendering trees. I loved the process of painting, being outside and painting with people, but the subject matter bored me. And, it scared me. I was bored with something that I planned my retirement around. In the five years since I started, I’d sunk a college tuition (my day's price) on classes, books and workshops to learn it. It was no small thing for me to get a whiff of painting ennui; I could see myself donning a beret, picking up a Gauloises and downing even more espresso each day and getting depressed about inspiration. (Did you know one of my nicknames is Dopio?)
Anywhoo (as my friend Nancy says), this existential angst drove me to my journal and I had a talking with myself about painting. Actually, using an Intensive Journaling technique from Ira Progoff, I actually had a discussion with Painting and learned from the dialog that Painting thought that I didn’t have a meaningful relationship with trees and insinuated that divorce wasn’t an option. (Painting can be quite loquacious and emphatic when you get it started.) Painting urged me to make a list of things I cared about to see whether a meaningful subject might emerge. Writing, climate change, dinner, wine, social life, Russel Crowe, sex trafficking, forest fires, melting ice caps were on the list, and so was the degradation of monarch butterfly and bee populations.
That got me thinking more. I’d taken a beekeeping class at Garfield Conservatory and realized just how important bees were to our food security. I learned how much work it is to sustain healthy hives and how easy it is with a thoughtless spray of an herbicide to wipe out thousands of bees… and fertilization of almonds or grapes or wine. Bees I realized are a key to many things I’d listed, and the search for finding bees and their keepers to paint offered a new adventure. And, it has.
I started searching out new places to paint and found hives in community gardens and roofs of restaurants, as well as the Botanic Garden and forest preserves. I now follow on Instagram, beekeepers all over the world that send me photos of their operations. I always ask permission to paint a photo of a beekeeper and send them a photo of the finished painting.
Am I making a difference in the degradation of the bee population? A flutter of a bee wing, maybe. Not anything like the impact of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg who is bringing awareness to the climate crisis all over the world. My wee bit of contribution and meaning is further back and in the food chain, so to speak, but I can see impact on people’s awareness. One friend sent photos of historical beehives in Slovakia and an art installation at Kew Garden in London that lights up and makes sounds as bees interact. She associated bees and me. A couple people from different places in the US, have sent me info on mead – honey ale – good to know, and glad they’re associating mead, made from honey, made by bees with my work. Back in the day, I said I wanted a farm, so I could have sheep, so I could have their wool to weave. I didn’t make that happen nor have I had to clean up sheep sh--, (a definite upside to not getting what you want), yet that interest spurred Christmas and birthday gifts of rams and ewes made of glass, wood, stone, wool, and paintings too, all of which showed their care for me and my interest.
Now, as a result of interest in bees and 27 painting to show, more than 100 people saw my work, and a few pieces are hanging in homes where others see it. Like the sheep, I’ve been offered mead to drink, received earrings, a tea towel, honey soap, honey wine, honey and a painting too. It’s my hope that as my social network so generously thought of me, that they also think more intentionally of bees. In that way, my painting something I care about makes the painting even more enjoyable. And, surprisingly, after a bit of a break, I have found more enjoyment again in painting trees.
This essay was written in view of the Plein Air Painters Chicago, a group I lead, painting with the Chicago Group of the Sierra Club on Saturday, September 21. On December 12, 2019, we will offer a portion of proceeds of sales at a reception for the Sierra Club. I’d encourage every painter to have a conversation with Painting to learn how your work might resonate with their mission. To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth;To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources;To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.
Hey Painting, what do you want to do today?
