"Guardians"- Melonie Steffes

Oil on Canvas
20"x20"
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“Domestication is a sustained multi-generational relationship in which one group of
organisms assumes a significant degree of influence over the reproduction and care of
another group to secure a more predictable supply of resources from that second
group.” --Wikipedia
The paintings in this show are not a complete body of work. They are a
window into a much larger creative journey. Each year that circles round, I find
myself less interested in buying into what this so called “civilization” is selling.
I’m in the process of weeding out what isn’t useful to my actual life. True, there
are certain societal norms that help us to get along with each other and be safe,
but I’m talking about all this other distraction that is meaningless and blocks our
minds from the real, natural world we are actually still part of. Our obsession
with controlling everything from the lives of all our animal, vegetable and mineral
neighbors, down to prescribing what a “real” art show is supposed to be, even
down to each others own body hair, drowns out the wild-authentic
communication we could be tuned in to. I feel quite sure that you won’t find this
connection listening to a “forest bathing” podcast either. When was the last time
you left your home without your social media entourage? A structured activity?
Shoes? Off your leash? How often are we just still, on the earth, paying attention
to the non-human life around us, and not shooing it away or spraying it with
some poison? We are so so deeply domesticated that we don’t even know the
difference anymore. Our efforts to conquer, categorize, sanitize and monetize
every part of life on earth are taking us down with the ship.
These paintings are attempts to express feelings, visions and experiences
I’ve had while out of doors, without social media drugging me, without the rules,
and for a little while slipping away from the things of man.
—Melonie Steffes

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