Within the Bittersweet

Within the Bittersweet is a dark pastoral examination of motherhood and the landscape as sites of connection to the Anthropocene. The photographs in the series were taken in and around my West Alabama home where dense vegetation and natural beauty belie the increasingly alarming escalation of climate change. Amid thick greenery, chemical and fossil fuel industries dot our region, spreading particulates and toxins across the terrain and into our bodies and the atmosphere. In my artwork, the dark realities of the landscape we live in are interlaced with representations of my deep love for my children and the physical world around us—a living landscape of incredible complexity that my daughters are only just coming to know. The climate crisis will undoubtedly reshape the world they inherit, and in my artwork I negotiate the beauty and heartbreak of raising them on a wondrous planet in the midst of change.