The story behind the artwork

Coal is fossilized wood. Great time and pressure have transformed it to it's inky black state. It captures light in a unique and beautiful way, glittering and reflecting prisms, shining in deep indigos and rose.

I have a personal relationship with coal, as an important part of my family heritage. My feelings about this subject are mixed. I am reminded of my great-grandfather's labor in the mines of Pennsylvania. His sons and their sons, and the fathers before him wove a family legacy around this precious resource. Their hard work through the generations gave my generation the many opportunities that I've enjoyed. Millions more still labor in the coal mines world-wide. Generations of families still are carrying on the tradition of hard work and lethal conditions. No one wants to take jobs from people, but something has to be done sooner or later. This resource will not be around forever, and with this age of new consciousness about environmental protection it is time for change.

When I was is college I created a "heritage box" as a class project. It was a wooden shadow box. I filled it with coal collected from the nearby railroad tracks in Providence, RI. It was the first time I had ever sudied a piece of coal. I recognized a beauty to it that I still reflect on to this day. Now, nearly twenty years later, I am interested in expressing this beauty once again in a new medium and style. Perhaps I will address it again in another twenty years... Where will the coal be then? Will it still be a part of our industrial economy? Will the mines be closed? Someday, coal might only be seen in museums and treasured mineral collections, as artifacts of our human history.

coal
acrylic on canvas
24x24"

Additional Links:

Read more about the Nevada Clean Energy Campaign. Right now new coal plants are being proposed for Nevada, one of which would be right near Great Basin National Park. Read why coal burning is harmful to us and our environment.