My Book -- Evergreen

I have created this art book about old-growth forests. It is a non-profit project to benefit organizations that are helping our last remaining primeval woodlands. It is printed on 100% recycled paper. The book is full of original paintings and drawings and a series of sequential essays I’ve written concerning the beauty and importance of our last remaining primeval forests.  The book describes a journey of going into the ancient woods; learning about the natural sciences first and then into how those facts may pertain to our inner world of thoughts and feelings, that is, our souls. The text and the images follow and reflect each other throughout the course of the book. This has taken 20 years to complete. During that space of time, an area roughly half the size of Alaska has been deforested globally, many ancient forests went down, and many animals and plants went extinct with them.

Ancient forests are special these days and most of us haven’t ever seen one, except in pictures.  Yet they are a realm of beauty that once encompassed much of the world’s land and wherein much of our ancestry, our mythology and well-being have come from. In old-growth forests we see things like no other place. When trees are left undisturbed, they take upon deep characters. When forests are left undisturbed, they live in communities, much like humans. In ancient forests we find a community of lifeforms working together to create an intensely beautiful place with an obvious harmony which is quite outstanding to our modern world. Forests bring and hold moisture in the land, they create and distribute fresh air; they build soils through millennia. They are at the beginnings of streams and rivers and provide the habitat for a great majority of the earth’s biodiversity. All life forms on earth require healthy forests, whether we are near or far from them; as the world is round, life moves in a circle.

  Just in historical time, the earth has lost 80% of its primeval forests due to human intervention. In North America, in about 500 years we have deforested roughly 95 % of the original native forests. The roughly 5 % remaining are fragmented and discontinuous in parks and preserves. There are many animals and plants which mainly rely on these few old-growth ecosystems. They are symbolic jewels of what our ancient world was like – the great beauty of what we had lived amongst through our long evolution.  Our woodlands are not healthy. Without a healthy forest we do not have clean flowing streams and rivers, without these, the fish suffer, then the oceans are damaged, the climate changes, it comes back around.

 But I believe any problem can be remedied. In a fast approaching one-world-wide culture, we have the means to come together to re-green and rewild our environment. Indeed, the interest in this is rising, and the aim of this work is to contribute towards this collective goal of; first bringing attention to this subject of the plight of the forests, and to save from logging any more old-growth, and then into what we can do to change the situation to something positive. We should do it now before it’s too late. We can model our forests after the old ones and repair them. Forestry practice can aim for selective logging of single trees while promoting and keeping wild habitat for animals and plants. For by doing so, we help ourselves and our descendants. I believe we need these few remaining wild places for our very humanity. As our modern world grows ever busier and we grow increasingly distant from our wildness, we need them that much more. They are places of refuge and restoration of our spirits. By saving these places we will be gifting our children. They surely will thank us.

Due to the rather large importance of this situation, I will be giving 95 % of the profits to environmental organizations working in the Pacific Northwest region of America that are helping to save the last of the primeval stands; and equally those who are rehabilitating areas that have been damaged due to logging practices. This is an issue of global concern, and the purchase of a book will provide a means of directly supporting our forests and receiving something in return, both of these, you may have for your life.  I am hoping to make this a self-generating ongoing project where this piece of art may continue to create funds to those who are giving aid to rejuvenate and protect the wild places we need and love so much.

Thank you