Artist Statement: We wake up together. Even if what we wake up to is on fire, remember that in some important ways we chose this, and each other. It is better to be awake then asleep, especially if the hillside is on fire, and when things go sideways it’s better to not be all alone.
In this painting there are two sequoias on fire, two red giants, intertwined. They grew up from seeds together, and today they are going out together. The fire that consumes their trunks is the fire that will roughen the rough coating protecting their seeds and, in a few months, create new sequoias.
How do we understand our participation in this? We have used the resilience of the natural world toward our own ends for too long now. Enough already. We must turn and see, we must change our lives or have them changed for us. My wife once said to me, “What’s really burning down is your selfishness.” If only!
What’s real here though is this: catastrophes, whether personal or environmental, are worsened by selfishness and fear. If we set it burning then we can put it out.
Bio: Michael Prettyman is an artist and scholar who grew up on the Gulf of Mexico in Florida's fabled Redneck Riviera. He moved to New York city in 1994. He holds a master’s degree in theology from the Harvard Divinity School He studied at the Academy of Art and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He has been painting his entire adult life, with gallery shows in New York City, Hong Kong and Barcelona. He has exhibited at the United Nations General Assembly, The American Museum of Natural History, the Tsvetaeva Museum of Art in Moscow and the National Museum of Art in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He has studied meditation and thangka painting a the Tsering Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal.
He has studied meditation and sacred artmaking in Buddhist and Christian monasteries
in Italy, Nepal, India and the United States. Michael’s scholarly work in comparative religion
dovetails with his practice as an artist. He is convinced that the practice of art making is itself
a religious activity, as is the viewing of it. He writes, “Art is something sacred in and of itself. The sacred, mythological past need not be inaccessible to us-it’s not hiding in a church or a book, it is at our fingertips because it is within us. When we approach our common humanity we approach that which is sacred in each of us.” jmp829@mail.harvard.edu http://www.michaelprettyman.org/
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