Oklahoma Dust Bowl, watercolor challenge

"Dust Bowl Oklahoma," 5 by 7 watercolor, 300 Lb. d'Arches

"I got them dust bowl blues..."

                                                                                          --Woody Guthrie

"...a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk..."

                                           --Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck

Today's painting, and my thoughts, in the Oklahoma series probably won't be the favorite of any one, except me, but the watercolor crosses into what I think art should be ... more than a pretty picture, something that tells a story, that "means" and is relevant.

Oklahomans today seem to  forget and ignore what our families went through in the Great Depression, when greed and abuse of the land caused a national and international crisis for everyone, especially working people.

Only Depression art in photography, fiction, music and painting captured the truth of that suffering. Steinbeck, Guthrie, Lange, WPA artists, they all told stories. Out of crisis comes art.

Europeans invading this continent have abused the land and its residents--human and animal,  forever, spurred by greed and committing genocide in God's name--thinking the land was meant to be plundered for profit until worn out. Whether cotton and slavery in the South, coal in Appalachia, mining in the West, water on the llano Estacado, or exterminating the buffalo or plowing up the sod in the Great Plains, the results have been the same.  

It's pathetically ironic that these "God-fearing" people despised  Native Americans' respect for the natural world as part of something sacred, to be respected because all are part of one creation. Instead those who believed their god was everywhere saw no sin in harming the natural world, even though that was harming themselves. This is more than Transcendentalism, though Emerson, et. al., had it right. 

Science has proved that we're all connected, even though the current president and his "environment" leader--an Okie who should know better--reject science and the health of our country and planet.  Again, their view is the planet is there for  selfish use and profit, nothing more--no respect for the land, or care for the future. Nothing has changed since the Conquistadors were the first to arrive 525 years ago.

Abuse the land, abuse nature--refusing to accept the world's peril of climate change, of rising temperatures because of greed--you abuse "god," and therefore every creature and the future. This isn't politics, it's history and science, and real religion.

What will happen when the oil and the water is gone, when you abuse "god"? The Dust Bowl will happen again.

"Paint what you feel," wrote one artist. This is what I feel. It started deep inside, and welled up, the image, the thoughts, the art, then the painting, and finally these words. They won't be favorites--but they're mine.

Day 10, #WorldWatercolorMonth challenge.
Palette--Burnt and Raw Umber, Sepia, Alizarine Crimson

Grapes of Wrath--Dust Bowl Future

Dust Bowl Future, 9 by 12 watercolor, 140# Fabriano Artistico

The Dust Bowl Future looms on humanity's horizon like Black Sunday did in the Dust Bowl Depression.
 Read Mr. Steinbeck's opening lines in "Grapes of Wrath"--

•     "To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale pink in the red country and white in the gray country....
•    "The air and the sky darkened and through them the sun shone redly, and there was  a raw sting in the air....
•    "In the morning the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood. All day the dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth."

"We will see this again," I thought," forgetting the lessons of that man-made disaster," and starting painting, from the gut. 

Humanity is inhumanely writing its obituary, its extinction notice. 
Science, and detailed books about mass extinctions, and politicos ignoring factual science about climate change, spurring contempt for any regard for our planet's health turned my thoughts to the opening paragraphs of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath."

Just nine years from now--in about 2026--wars will be probably be fought over water and food, not oil, and exploding populations and increasing heat will turn much of the earth brown, with coastlines swamped under rising oxygen-dead oceans.
As the politicos have no concern for  the future, only lining their corporate pockets with more greed, at my age I don't have much to worry about. But my children and grandchildren do.

This is not "dystopian." (I had to look that word up the first time I heard it. It isn't pretty) Facts--2026--Ten billion people, less water, less farmland, less food, less water, fewer jobs. Chinese will be the most spoken language. Islam will be the largest religion. 
Unless there is a pandemic, or a nuclear war, it will happen because the leaders of the world's most powerful country are trying to speed up the process, ignoring science, attacking the environment, to make a quick buck. 
Best single example, of many,  is  Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA...the fox in charge of the hen house. He's a foe of environment because his puppet strings are pulled by big corporations, big energy and others  like the Koch Bros., who want to rape the earth to make more money, screwing the future of the middle class and poor.

 We have passed the tipping point of turning the process around where humans can survive on earth. This isn't politics. This is science.
Don't believe it? It's happened before. Don't agree with it? You didn't live in the Dust Bowl, or study it,  did you?
Thus the vision of this painting...more to come.