Dam Pond 24 x 36 oil on canvas by Casey Chalem Anderson (Peconic Land Trust Perserve)
How many times have you driven past the section of water at Dam Pond looking North as you rushed to meet the Orient Point ferry? Did you pull over and take it in? Did you acknowledge the fragility of the sand spit stretching across the horizon or felt the big sky as it filled up with layered clouds. The risk of not seeing this and other unique places out here is the risk of losing it forever.
As an artist, it’s my job to search out the beauty of the landscape. It shouldn’t be so difficult……we live in such a dramatically beautiful area with ocean and waterways almost everywhere you look. But even I take it for granted as I drive by. How many times have you driven for miles and not remembered what you saw along the way?
We are barraged with images, news and social media, especially now during this Corona Virus pandemic. There are forces that feel so much out of our control that we shut down and stop looking. We almost don’t want to see.
Art has a way of shaping how we see life which is why it is so critical. There is risk of becoming numb to the beauty that surrounds us as we go about our daily errands and our anxiety looms just below the surface. We need the artist’s eye to see what is right in front of us.
What we stop seeing, we stop caring about and what we stop caring about, we risk losing. There is a risk in losing our farmlands, our marshlands and open fields. Lose the land and we lose EVERYTHING, you can’t get it back. There is real danger in not paying attention.
We need our open views for our mental health (you can buy valium online), we need to keep our beaches clean and to hold on to the fragile environment, we need the farms that give us food for the community. Our entire economy is based on the uniqueness of our land here.
Art recalibrates your very existence. Landscapes and seascapes can be the antidote to collective trauma. The artist brings all this into consciousness by literally framing it for us.
All the very best,
Casey
If you missed, “The Intersection of Art and Nature, Conservation as Inspiration. A Conversation with the Artists of Plein Air Peconic” last week you can listen here: https://peconiclandtrust.org/blog/the-intersection-of-art-and-nature-conservation-as-inspiration-a-conversation-with-the-artists-of-plein-air-peconic
Get to know the Peconic Land Trust, places that you can hike and discover right now: https://peconiclandtrust.org/places-to-visit
