I asked ChatGTP the hardest art questions I could think of. I was impressed with the clear, useful answers it delivered. Yes, I would pursue this further.

To see a bobcat in the wild, when I’m standing out there in the same field with it, painting its habitat, this is a thrill. Plein air painting has its unique moments, and this was one.

The ideas for art arrive from somewhere and insist upon being addressed. But it’s not until the paint brush is moving that the real action starts.

The other day I had the thought that I’d like to paint people doing mundane things, like walking the dog, or wheeling a shopping cart…but they’d be doing this on the Greenland ice Sheet, and it would be melting around them.

But how to make the people dimensional, not stick figures, not little notations of the brush? How to do the Sargent approach, a few flicks of the brush and it says it all if you back away about four feet from the canvas. That is hard to do, if you are trying to indicate the humanity of the people. They are not manikins.

The idea is that we all are downstream of the melting Ice Sheet in Greenland and that in Antarctica. No one wants to preach about this, least of all me, but I do think I could cause someone to think about what it means, that the sea levels are rising.

Meanwhile, back on the Ice Sheet, would the people need to have some sort of padded shoes to keep their feet warm? What of those doing yoga, wouldn’t they be uncomfortable on their mats with no insulation between them and the ice? You see the dilemma.

Stay tuned on where this will go. The narrative may be too strong, to put people on the Ice Sheet doing their everyday activities… I will think about it more.