“Green Evolution” Artist’s Statement

A sunlit leaf caught my eye one day while out walking in the field. On its green surface meandered white lines which were the handiwork of a tiny leaf miner, an insect larva that tunnels through the inner cell layers of leaf-matter. Those hieroglyphics embedded in green were like a secret message saying: “all life—yours, mine—comes down to this: sunlight and a green leaf.”
While drawing the leaf miner’s design in my sketchbook, I thought about this wild memo. Breath, food, shelter, even the paper I write and paint on, all exist through the alchemy of green plant life. I imagined how chlorophyll works its heart out making food for plants, which then transforms into the substance of animals that munch, crack, and swallow the leaves and seeds of that green world. And I also imagined the massive tangle of roots below the earth, holding the magical muck of soil together, sucking up water and nutrients.

That intricate rune on the leaf even got me thinking about photosynthesis billions of years back, pumping out so much oxygen it created a sheltering blanket around the earth, protecting the planet from the harshest rays of the sun—a must for our evolution and most living things. Now that’s a lot for a little green spot in a cell to do.
My ideas usually begin after seeing a small detail like the leaf miner’s mark, then span out into thoughts about life itself. For this reason my sketchbooks, documenting my studies of the natural world, are on display along with larger paintings, where original observation merges with imagination in a dreamlike blend of precise knowledge and myth. It’s in this way that every work in Green Evolution explores some plant/animal connection, allowing the flow of science and personal vision to freely cross-pollinate and create something that might surprise me in the studio as much as that magical leaf did in the field.

—Suzanne Stryk

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