The Last Honey Bee Painting

Three youth gaze down with astonishment at a larger than life dead honey bee laying on the ground. They are dressed in warm clothing suggesting it is the fall. The background is a small grassy hill surrounded by an ultramarine sky. In my imagination these kids are exploring in the woods when they discover this dead bee. With its larger scale, they are convinced it is something magical and they bemoan its death. Uncertain of what to do, they stand in a moment of contemplation, each considering how this find has impacted them. This painting is rendered in gouache and watercolor to achieve the transparent and opaque passages. This artwork was inspired by finding a dead honey bee in my house, I then set about painting it from real life. Finding the dead bee, made me consider the precarious nature of its life and our human reliance on the bee as a part of our larger ecosystem. I hope the viewer will be left with a sense of awe, mystery, and poignancy. This is a part of my series of works about motherhood: Motherhood, giving birth, and parenting are a spiritual and consciousness awakening . Watching the growing body of a baby, time is variable. Furthermore, there are numerous lessons I am learning from parenting that deepen my connection to mindfulness and the natural world. I walk every day with my son and this practice is a place where I view and experience things that become my subject matter. I notice how the changing environment feels similar to the human body in pregnancy, the quick growth of my son, or shifting stages of my life- the environment and the human body become one and the same for me. I am amazed how the body undergoes a metamorphosis during pregnancy and birth. The womb opens up another universe, to bring forth a body. There is a magic to the visceral body bountifully producing milk, that is not unlike how earth provides food, shelter, and nourishment for humans. I am thinking about how these things- birth, parenting, and nature instill a sense of awe in me. They are meditations on the brevity of man and the natural environment, and ultimately our interconnection. I am further thinking about the complex and invisible nature of women’s or caregiver’s labor and how this impacts the formation of a child’s identity beginning at birth. The way we tend to these things is reflective of our society as a whole. These are the contemplations, inside the paintings, drawings, and collages, and animations, I am making.

Painting:Gouache on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:12 W x 16 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.