Exhibit features paintings of farmland and shores of the Chesapeake Bay
Opens April 22, 2003



Exhibit Statement

Some years ago I began exploring the shores and farmlands on the Northern Neck of Virginia. First in a borrowed canoe and then in a kayak, my husband and I paddled through salt marshes and creeks as I sketched the area. Over the course of the seasons I returned many times, both by water and on foot, to make the drawings that serve as the raw material for this show.

Themes took shape as I worked up my sketches and developed into a series of paintings that represent a disturbing continuity with a series I'd started earlier. "The Drought Series," painted last year where I live in New England, now extends to the Chesapeake Bay. And I fear this is just the beginning.

During my 30 years as a landscape painter and close observer of nature, I have watched the changes in the weather patterns, the alarming effects of pollution, and the increasing temperatures due to global warming. Through it all, however--the storms and floods and droughts--the Earth manages to retain her magic and her majesty. Reflections in floodwaters can be inspiring. The parched colors of drought-stricken landscapes are warm like autumn tones, though oddly out of place in mid-summer. The unquenched reach of the weakened, sparsely foliated trees is all the more delicate and poignant. Even fields of failed crops display muted, yet subtly beautiful colors.

The entire Eastern Seaboard (and much of the world) has been either too dry or flooded for many years. Some of the worst heat has scorched the mid-Atlantic region as witnessed in "The Drought Series."

Floods, droughts, and severe storms have always been part of Nature's pattern, but they seem to be more frequent and intense now. We appear to be changing the Earth into a place where future generations will not be able to survive, let alone thrive. Mother Nature is enormously resilient, but clearly even she has limits beyond which full recovery is impossible. We are testing those limits.

For our children's children, let us leave a legacy that will benefit everyone. A cleaner, wilder, more peaceful Earth.



Jamie Young, painter