Michelle Waters

My paintings fuse my quite serious concerns about the environmental crisis we face with my twisted sense of humor. I often wonder how we humans decided that we are the smartest and most important species, given that we seem to have a predilection for war and a bent for mass suicide. In my imaginary world, animals revolt against the concrete-enshrouded materialist mess that 21st century life has become.

I call my work “environmental surrealism”. Influences include kitschy portrayals of animals that one sees in mass-marketed popular culture, the nightmarish imagery of Hieronymus Bosch, the writings of Edward Abbey, and my work as a wildlife rehabilitator. My cute but naughty animals are having a good deal of fun reclaiming their habitat by demolishing industrial objects. Grizzly bears with jackhammers “restoring” a freeway, a mountain lion with an acetylene torch decommissioning a bulldozer, arctic wildlife laying waste to a Hummer dealership and animals tearing down billboards for housing developments are some of the characters who populate my paintings.

These paintings deconstruct the assumption of human superiority to other species by giving my view of what might transpire if animals took control over the fate of the planet.

I offer my work as cultural resistance to ecocide.

Artist’s site: http://www.michellewatersart.com/

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