"Starry Nights in the Northern Lights" Painting

My Artistic Manifesto One of the core themes in all my pictures, especially the wolf pictures, and all pictures that I do is empathy. I truly believe that the lack of empathy that people, and society as a whole, displays towards animals, and not just animals, but also people of other backgrounds, races, religions and economic classes, is at the core of our current predicament as a species. It all ties in to how society functions as a whole. And what better animal to test the resolve of human empathy than the wolf, there is no other animal that has polarised public opinion about it than a wolf. You either love them or you hate them, they have the same number of people that love them with a passion as the those that hate them with a passion. So what I want the viewer to get from viewing these pictures is a) the environmental message behind them - the plight that wolves are facing right now b) if you can relate to that picture; if you can see the wolf as not just a wolf or animal or even pest, but as another living being, I would like to challenge the viewer, can you empathise with where that living being is in that point in time. If you can empathise with that, then that creates a powerful message within that artwork which resonates to the environmental message, because it allows you to see what humans are doing to wolves right now as a species. I feel that disconnect between the modern world and the natural world is the reason for a lot of the situations we're in right now. For me these pictures are personal, they represent situations that I'm facing right now, and have faced at the time of the pictures, and that represents a coming to a head of a lot of things that were happening throughout my life to an extent, but really coming to ahead in the 2010-2013 period. For me they're surprisingly familiar to an extent that I wish it wasn't as relatable as it is, because then my life would be a lot easier. Obviously I don't want the viewer to draw that from it, which is why these pictures have a strong environmental component which ties in/parallels situations I have faced as well. (b) also allows the viewer to draw from their own experiences to form their reaction to the work.