Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Washing up in Ballookey's Moleskine Sketchbook


I sort blobbed this up a little.

It has a story. Onondaga Lake, in Syracuse, NY, where I used to live, is one of the most polluted lakes in the country if not the world. I was there one day walking and taking pictures when a migrant worker drove up in his pick-up truck, got out, and washed up in the toxic waters of the lake. A storm was approaching--I tried to tell him that the water wasn't clean, but he didn't understand me. I was thinking the storm was a figurative one as well as a literal one.

I had some problems with this, and may try it again sometime.

acrylic.

3 comments:

John said...

Great painting and story.

Annie Jeffries said...

Your story is heartwrenching and sums our society up in just a few brief words. We have become such a Tower of Babel that we can't even successfully warn another of imminent danger. Your moleskine sketch, though, is like a dream of what could be if only we would take care.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Thank you John and Annie for your very kind comments.

Sadly, this lake is so polluted that a rescue operation would be phenomenally expensive--dredging the sludge, filtering the water etc. It may never happen, they just want to SEAL IT OVER.