Aphoristic Extinctions
Begun in 2015, Aphoristic Extinctions is a series of large ink paintings by environmental artist Jon Goldman of endangered species verging or on the list to becoming extinct. The paintings are of a wide variety of fauna paired with titles that explore how ironic language and aphorisms keeps fear, control and lack of knowledge of the natural world at bay.
from wikipedia: “Telling the bees “is a Western European tradition in which bees are told of important events, including deaths, births, marriages and departures and returns in the keeper’s household. If the custom was omitted or forgotten and the bees were not “put into mourning,” then it was believed a penalty would be paid, such as the bees leaving their hive, stopping the production of honey or dying.
The custom is best known in England but has also been recorded in Ireland, Wales, Germany, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Bohemia (now Czechia) and the United States.
Little is known about the origins of this practice, although there is some unfounded speculation that it is loosely derived from or perhaps inspired by ancient Aegean notions about bees’ ability to bridge the natural world and the afterlife.”
In the case for the series APHORISTIC EXTINCTIONS, bees are alpha pollinators and are critical to the natural landscape and to human survival, yet they are constantly under threat from pesticides, habitat encroachment and loss of green space through overdevelopment.
In late 2001, we lived in Concord, Massachusetts. In the shadow of the recent destruction from what has become known as September 11th, we had been planning a major trip with our two children, aged 13 and 8 at the time. We took our two children out of school, and began a circumnavigation of […]
This is from the series APHORISTIC EXTINCTIONS where the artist pairs colloquial titles about animals as a way to reveal human’s fear of other creatures, and to the unfortunate decimation of species.
