Anne Sargent Walker: Can We Bear It

My mixed media paintings explore the beauty, complexity and fragility of the natural world, and our complicated relationship with it. The surface content of birds, flora and other creatures often degrades, peels back, dissolves or drips to reveal layers underneath, suggesting the planet’s warming and its consequences, including the loss of habitat, species, the earth itself, and of course us.

While my work has explored the intersection of human activity and nature for decades, current news tells us that the time we have to change our ways in regards to our environment and the creatures with whom we share it has diminished to a crisis point. Will we be able to bear the responsibility of making serious and immediate changes to our ways of life, or will we be able to bear the possible collapse of entire ecosystems?