Art to Calm Your Climate Anxiety — and inspire creative action
Finding resilience and resistance through art…
Last week, on 27 September 2023, the UK government approved the Rosebank oil field, a project which will create more CO2 pollution than the combined emissions of the world’s 28 lowest income countries. As we plummet towards climate, ecological, and societal collapse — the consequences of which we are already seeing across the world in deadly wildfires, droughts, and heatwaves — you may well be feeling overwhelmed and powerless. In fact, it would be more concerning if you were not feeling panic or grief in the face of what is happening.
Climate justice activist Tori Tsui — and author of It’s Not Just You, How to Navigate Eco-Anxiety and the Climate Crisis — argues that extreme feelings of anxiety about the climate crisis are a logical reaction to living through the sixth mass extinction. As she explains in an interview: “It’s very easy for us to say, I have eco-anxiety, but it goes so much deeper than that… It’s what it means to live in a society that doesn’t prioritise people’s wellness, that treats people as disposable — that treats our planet as disposable.”
Sometimes I wish I could just pretend that life is going to be the same, and that the future I once imagined for myself was still possible. But, like anything, it is only once you face reality — and your own feelings around it— that you can start to move forward and to heal. I also find it helpful to remember what Greta Thunberg said when I saw her speak at the Southbank Centre in London last year: “Doom is a privilege… Having the option to do something is a privilege — and if we have a privilege, we need to use it.”
Nonetheless, climate anxiety can have a paralysing effect, and so we need to find ways of living with it and transforming those feelings of panic into something constructive. Tsui explains: “There isn’t a quick fix for anything, but we have to start reinstating community care and living less individualistically and more collectively.” Fostering a sense of community and connection to others will give us the resilience we need to resist the planet-wrecking, profit-chasing corporations, policies, and governments that will lead to the untold suffering of millions. And ultimately, billions.
I believe that art offers a powerful tool for this. Not only can artworks start dialogues with those around us, it often helps to ground us, and to remind us that life can be beautiful and joyful despite our trajectory. I find that spending time with artworks gives me a space to relax, breathe out and re-group — as well as giving me a much needed dose of faith in human creativity. Today, I would like to show you a few artists who you might want to look at when you are feeling overwhelmed or paralysed by the reality of the crises we are living through. If you can, I especially encourage you to see the artworks in person.
I’ve included a few suggestions for those based in the UK, but since this is not always easy or possible, the images can also be found in art books in your local library, or simply setting one as the background on your phone or computer. The artworks below are not hiding places from reality. Instead, I hope that they might help you to reflect on human resilience, resistance, and capacity for hope — which, in turn, will help you feel less alone, and more ready to take action.
Vincent Van Gogh: “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
Vincent is one of the most famous artists in the world — and yet he was hardly known in his lifetime. Van Gogh notoriously experienced a lot of suffering in his life, and he died in 1890 aged only 37, probably by suicide. Despite this, Van Gogh’s paintings are very often infused with a powerful sense of hope, particularly those which depict the natural world around him. His vivid use of colour and his famously dynamic brushwork imbues these paintings with a life force that seems to reflect Van Gogh’s own perseverance in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Van Gogh’s life story — and posthumous success — tells of how drastically perceptions and situations can change, in ways which would previously have been unimaginable.
Here are some of my favourite quotes from Van Gogh’s letters, mainly written to his brother, Theo. Many of his words seem to resonate in the context of today’s climate movement. For example:
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”
“Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.”
“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.”
“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
Perhaps we could adapt this quote for the climate crisis to say something like: if you hear a voice within you say that you cannot make a difference, then by all means, take action and that voice will be silenced.
Try this: If one of these quotes — or any quote that you read at any time — particularly inspires you, you could try writing it out on a piece of paper and putting it up in a place where you will see it regularly.
A good selection of Van Gogh’s paintings can be found in the National Gallery, London, UK (listed here)
Ana Mendieta: “I become an extension of nature and nature becomes an extension of my body”
Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter, and video artist, best known for her ‘earth-body’ artworks which famously used her own body and the natural world as mediums of expression. Mendieta began working on her Silhueta series in 1973 in both Iowa and Mexico. She carved her own figure into the earth using many different materials, such as flowers, or fire, or moss, and recorded these traces and shapes in video and photographic form. Her work is profoundly ecological: “My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant from plant to galaxy. My works are the irrigation veins of this universal fluid. Through them ascend the ancestral sap, the original beliefs, the primordial accumulations, the unconscious thoughts that animate the world.”
Today, these images of Mendieta’s body becoming part of the natural world are powerful reminders of our place as humans as part of nature. I think of the climate protest slogan ‘we are nature defending itself.’ The more we can see ourselves as an extension of nature, and nature as an extension of ourselves — unlearning centuries of Western colonial ideology that sees anything other than human as inanimate and unfeeling — the more we can honour our grief in the face of the climate and ecological crises.
As Tsui says: “there are marginalised communities who have undergone profoundly stressful, existential crises and we can learn from them in a way that honours those who have come before us and build off of the resilience they’ve cultivated.” Mendieta is just one example of this. In a video interview, she explains that her work with natural materials has a lot to do with Cuba, where she was born and raised, and then forced to emigrate with her sister to the United States when she was aged only twelve: “I was attracted to nature because I didn’t have a Motherland… I have never stopped feeling for Cuba.” Her cousin explains how, as children, they used to construct figures out of sand on the beach, and how “that world of Varadero is very much interwoven with the elements and symbology that was used in her work.”
Try this: Make some time to re-visit a place in nature that is special to you. It may be somewhere near where you grew up, or your favourite spot in your local park. When you are there, spend some time closely observing your surroundings — maybe try jotting down what you see, hear, smell. Feel the soil or dirt in your hands, knowing that you are part of nature, and never alone in it. You could try using a small bit of soil, dust or grass to make marks on a page in your notebook.
If you can’t physically get to your special place in nature, take yourself to a quiet spot outdoors and take a few moments to ‘visit’ the place in your mind, remembering as much as you can about the sensations of being there (the smells, sounds, textures, temperature etc). Again, writing or drawing can help ‘take’ you there!
The Black Potters of Old Edgefield: “works of art bear witness to joys and traumas”
A recent exhibition at The Met in New York was dedicated to the stoneware industry by Black potters in Old Edgefield, South Carolina, during the nineteenth-century. The ceramics on display are products of industrial slavery, made by and with enslaved labour, and are examples of an early system of factory-level production.
These are objects which directly connect us to a past society founded on the exploitation and enslavement of millions, and which testify to generations of endurance and creativity in the face of unimaginable atrocities. As one of the co-curators Jason Young explains: “the pots raise questions about the way that works of art can be vehicles for expression as well as resistance, and vehicles that bear witness to joys and traumas, and offer us a very direct insight into the lived experiences of enslaved people.”
I think of what climate activist Mikaela Loach has spoken about with regards to the Transatlantic slave trade, in particular in relation to her own ancestors in Jamaica: “What gets me up in the morning is the fact that changes in the past have come from people deciding to look at really difficult odds and refuse to accept them, to challenge them and to believe that we can do so much more. If my ancestors who were enslaved in Jamaica could, against much greater odds than I face currently, could wake up every day and still believe that it was worth having children and that it was worth believing in a better future, then I have no choice but to do that. It’s that kind of belief, that kind of legacy that pulls me forward.”
The Edgefield stoneware developed in the western part of South Carolina, as a means of providing the region’s plantations with vessels for food preparation and storage. The industry was able to grow as it did because of the region’s wealth of natural resources, namely clay which had been used for centuries — the show included a clay pot made by a sixteenth-century Native American artist. Young explains: “They’re works of art, but they’re made under conditions of coercion. What does it mean to make a work of art, to have creativity, when you’re forced to do something?”
The Edgefield face vessels are some of the most evocative and intimate objects on display. These were most likely produced before or after the working day in the pottery, when enslaved men and women were able to express some of their own creative concerns.
Although we do not know the identities or names of the makers of these vessels, it is possible to trace the visual language and styles of individual makers. Young explains how the face vessels are “not unrelated to similar objects in West and West Central Africa where ritual objects were meant to be astonishing, and that that emotive response was part of the spiritual power that the object itself had.”
In a poignant historical coincidence, the same type of clay — kaolin also called ‘China Clay’ — was found naturally in both West Central Africa, where a significant number of the enslaved people in South Carolina were originally from. It is a powerful gesture towards their homelands, and a means of holding on to ancestral traditions which had been taken from them.
We do know the identity of one potter. He was known simply as ‘Dave’ and his name was David Drake. Dave was an enslaved and literate potter and poet, who worked in Edgefield for nearly all of his life. He carved his name and his own verses of poetry into the monumental storage jars that he made, making him one of the first enslaved potters to inscribe his work at a time when most enslaved people were forbidden from literacy. One of the most powerful lines reads:
“I wonder where is all my relations / Friendship to all — and every nation.”
There is also a broken pot on display in the exhibition. Young says: “I’m torn between a feeling of great loss that I have when I see this piece… knowing that it’s been broken, and also a feeling of promise, in the sense that those broken areas become windows to see inside. You can see the skill and deft hand that created those uniform walls on the outside of the pot; you can’t see that if the pot isn’t broken.”
Try this: take a bit of time to write down who you consider to be your ancestors, or people or groups of people who have tried to make the world a fairer and safer place for others — this can be as broad or as specific as you like, for example, someone in your family you admire, or a historical movement or struggle. Where can you find any artworks, artefacts, objects or stories — written or otherwise — which help you to feel more closely connected to your ancestors? Maybe you could create some?
It might help to listen here to some of Mikaela Loach’s conversation with Layla Saad about this. *
Slow looking… at Dutch still lifes
Sometimes the best thing to ease climate anxiety is distraction. This doesn’t mean ignoring your grief or panic, or denying the reality of the climate and ecological crises, but it can help to give yourself some space thinking about something different for a bit. Any artwork which you find interesting will work well, of course, but I am suggesting one type of painting which never fails to absorb and distract me: the intricately detailed still life paintings from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Holland.
There is a lot to be said about these paintings from a decolonial and ecocritical perspective, since they reveal a lot about the Dutch Golden Age. It was a period marked by extraordinary wealth made possible by colonial exploitation of peoples and lands. (You can read more relating to that in my blog post from a couple of years ago). But for the sake of calming our climate anxiety, for now we can simply look at the remarkable artistic skill of these paintings.
Standing in front of these meticulous works, you cannot help but lean closer and closer to spot the smallest details: an ant on a petal, a feather, a pinch of moss, the tufts on a rose stem, a glinting water drop on a leaf. It’s almost like being a child again, looking at your favourite story book illustrations. Look slowly, and let yourself become absorbed in the details. Let yourself remember that there is beauty in the world.
Here are a few recommendations to see Dutch still lifes in person:
- The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, has a whole gallery filled with Dutch still lifes, including by Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), the best documented woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age
- Vase with Flowers by Jan van Huysum (1682–1749) at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (see here)
- Room 17 in the National Gallery, London, includes two amazing works by Jan van Kessel the Elder (1626–1679); there is a very good 10-minute introductory video about his insect paintings here. *
Try this: go for a walk — ideally somewhere in nature — and ‘collect’ small things that you imagine could be included in a detailed still life. You don’t need to take these things home with you, just spend some time looking closely at each one. Notice the tiniest details, and appreciate them simply for what they are. If you wanted to go even further, I know someone who takes one photograph of a detail from nature every day, as an exercise in gratitude for this wonderful world.
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