Monday, June 15, 2009

WATER HARVESTING



The gouache on paper above is from my ongoing exploration of 'water'. It is called 'Water Harvesting' taking from the actual term 'water harvesting', which means irrigators collecting [or harvesting] by pumping water from a river or water system once the height of the water has reached a certain limit.


Like many of my paintings this image is ambigious. Is it a landscape of sky, midground and foreground? Is it a cross section? Is it an earial view of a river and surrounding land? This image is very like my previous post 'Currency Of Water' on June 1 this year. It poses similar questions about the tension between the natural flow of water and humankind's need to syphon from its flow. The tension is not only environmental but also financial. Wealth created by abundant supplies of water, its allocation, its storage, its industrial and agricultural uses is immense.

I have painted the top section with the word 'rain' and the bottom section with '$' signs. The mid section or 'river' has circles of words which represent dams, damming or water storages. These circles also represent the cycles of nature, but also play on the stock market term describing commodities as cyclical.

This image also 'speaks' about my interest in perspective. The ambiguity created by the possibility of multiple and simultaneous perspectives embraces all the many and various viewpoints stakeholders have about water and its usage. Water is a local and a global issue. And water itself can seep into the most intimate spaces as well as being a vast mass.

Water Harvesting gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2009

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