Chelsea Granger Artist Statement

On Our Way, New Work by Chelsea Granger

I began work for this series by looking at specific local endangered species, wanting to honor and make visible  my most local neighbors who are experiencing loss of their habitat, community, place, what we all stand to lose within a rapidly changing climate. As I moved deeper into making the series, the idea of endangerment shapeshifted into more abstract ideas  about what is disappearing or becoming invisible to us  and what we find within that loss. I wanted to make beauty for beauty’s sake within the enormous overwhelm of what is on a precipice of disappearing. I wanted to sing a praise song with my work.

How can we  live honoring what is dying? How do we lift up what we love, regardless of whether it will survive or not? In what ways can we celebrate what is fleeting and be with what is here while it is here?

How do we sing a song to the butterfly, praise the sun, and say thank you to a flower?

Where do we as people land in all of that unknown disappearing?

My  practice focuses on painting as a celebration, painting as a prayer. I hope that this work brings light to what we have/what we stand to lose and the potential for us to make rituals of thanks to it all.