Read the full Artist Statement:
This print, called “New Horizons Rise”, is inspired by an early morning walk where I watched the sunrise put on a beautiful glowing show across the wind turbine speckled ridges of western Maryland & West Virginia. The sight was awe-inspiring and stopped me in my tracks many times as the sun slowly crept up towards to bluing sky. I thought about the parallel of the sunrise and the wind turbines as new horizons & hopeful beginnings. I thought about the beautiful sight of new sustainable energy initiatives and wondered why some people find slowly churning turbines to be an eye-sore. To me, the turbines looked like a complimentary addition to the natural landscape, a symbol of hope for a future where the vast population of humans return to living in harmony with the natural world.
I had built the center tiny turbine out of vintage metal ornaments years ago during a creative play session in the studio, but I didn’t have a vision for how I wanted to share this little turbine with the world yet in my art. I kept it locked up for all these years as a reminder to one day return to it when I felt ready. After my sunrise walk I felt the urge to finally make some compositions that include turbines turning in harmony with an abstracted natural landscape. I’d like to make a whole collection of these wind turbine landscapes in the new year, showing the green energy as a complimentary & beautiful addition to the natural landscape, just like my metal type trees in some of my other prints. So this print is acting like a little trial run for the future wall art collection—an experiment of sorts to learn how to build & print turbines with rotors turned in various directions for a sense of movement. The typesetting was challenging, a fun puzzle, and now I’ve got a system for how to build these varied angled turbine rotors, which means you’ll be seeing more of these tiny turbines in many prints to come!
It’s time we normalize wind & solar sustainable energy sources as part of our everyday landscapes. This print is my first step in encouraging the world to learn to love these sustainable energy alternatives, and I hope it makes you smile each time you see the print and each time you see a wind turbine on a ridge near you! Cheers to beautiful new horizons ahead!