Wildland-Urban Interface (Mono No Aware)

Things are transformed one into another according to necessity,
and render justice to one another
according to the order of time.

—Anaximander (as quoted by Carlo Rovelli)

My home and studio inhabit a little ranch at the edge of vast Angeles National Forest—the Wildland-Urban Interface—a beautiful, tranquil, and secluded place that provides rich inspiration for my work as I observe and explore California. I am constantly aware and deeply respectful here of the profound interconnectedness of everything in this environment, living and nonliving, and how much the health of this ecosystem depends upon ecological knowledge, responsible stewardship, and treading lightly in this place in which I am merely a part of a much greater whole. The wonders of this place are grand, and punctuated by the constant threat of wildfires, earthquakes, mudslides, and the dangers to wildlife of human encroachment. My awareness of science and aesthetics, of the inevitability of change through time, from seasonal to geological to the current anthropogenic climate change crisis, and my long immersive hikes in mountains and forests and vigorous swims in the ocean, informs my life and art and I try to embody these experiences through painting, drawing, poetry, and sound work. The Japanese phrase, Mono no aware, the subtitle of this painting, can be roughly translated as “the pathos of things” and connotes the tender joy and sadness experienced by a sensitive observer to the ephemeral nature of existence. In Anasazi, my recorded poem and sound work, time is the central subject, both as subjectively experienced and as mused upon, researched and interpreted. Time is change, time is jazz, time is a reflection and embodiment of impermanence.

Wildland-Urban Interface (Mono No Aware). 2018-2024. Oil on panel. 36 x 48 in. (91.4 x 121.9 cm)

To be truly free one must take on the basic conditions as they are—painful, impermanent, open, imperfect—and then be grateful for impermanence and the freedom it grants us. For in a fixed universe there would be no freedom. With that freedom we improve the campsite, teach children, oust tyrants. The world is nature, and in the long run inevitably wild, because the wild, as the process and essence of nature, is also an ordering of impermanence.

—Gary Snyder. A Place in Space: Nets of Beads, Webs of Cells