A well-known climate activist’s call to action is that we should be acting as if “our house is on fire, because it is.”  Waterstone’s April exhibition of oil paintings by Susan Harrington are the artist’s interpretation of Oregon’s own “house on fire”.  

Harrington makes art about humanity’s relationship with the environment and her current project on this theme is an oil painting series about Oregon’s native and endangered plants. The deeper meaning of the series lies in the narrative of the subjects who are threatened or nearly extinct due to habitat loss from agricultural and urban development, cattle grazing, wildfire, and climate change.

She’s chosen to depict the series in small to large-scale paintings loosely modeled after a late eighteenth century style when artists traveled with scientists and often made paintings “in situ” where the plants were discovered. Paintings of Philipp Reinagle and Marianne North are an inspiration for Harrington’s plant portraits of these species’ decline.  

“Plants play such a vital role in our ecosystem; they are at the foundation and core of supporting life as we have known it. My goal with this series has been to bring attention to these threatened native species and consider the consequences of their loss, because each loss is like losing a piece of life’s foundation.”