Due to my lack of natural artistic ability, I’d describe my watercolor painting as sort of abstract. I chose to paint a peaceful beach setting, except there are pits of fire throughout the ocean with smoke rising to the skies. 

My first thought when creating this painting was that I wanted to find a connection to Flight Behavior, the novel we read throughout this term which heavily discussed climate change and its impact. In this novel, a kaleidoscope of monarch butterflies lands in Tennessee, completely inconsistent with their normal migration patterns, and the protagonist, Dellarobia, works with scientist, Dr. Byron, to further investigate their unexpected arrival due to climate change. When Dellarobia first finds these swarms of butterflies, she describes them as flames, which is part of why I chose to include fire in my painting. I feel as though finding fire where it should not be is an accurate indicator of something wrong. 

In addition, as we’ve been experiencing the worsening of climate change through the past couple of decades, we have had an abundance of natural disasters. Devastating events such as the extreme flooding in South Asia, the wildfires in Australia, as well as countless others. As climate change is the overarching topic throughout this course, I decided to paint a fictional natural disaster. Yes, it is impossible for there to be fire amongst the ocean, however as climate change continues to worsen, the improbable continues to happen more and more.