Title: “Extinction”
Artist: Ariana Poe
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
“Nature doesn’t need people – people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature.”
~Harrison Ford
Capitalism, consumerism, wealth, and greed masked in what society dubs “success,” are quickly plummeting our species into extinction through the exhaustion of our natural resources. This all-consuming narcissistic race to acquire more corporeal stuff to fill a hypnagogic void created by advertising, which floods our senses from every direction, is to blame for our planet’s leading energy crisis, climate change, toxic pollution and the annihilation of our habitat.
In 2018 we lost the songbird Po’ouli native to Hawaii, the Alagoas Foliage-gleaner from northeastern Brazil due to deforestation in the region. The Spix’s Macaw a blue parrot native to Brazil and known for its onscreen role in 20th Century Fox’s “Rio.” In 2019 many more species being pushed to the brink could disappear forever.
Dissimilar to mass extinctions in the past, our current imminent crisis is almost solely caused by humans. While humanity ravenously consumes vulnerable habitats to line our pockets with zeros and to feel significant in a world that places the highest value on possessions, the earth rapidly sinks into a comma never to recover. Those things, those distractions void of transcendental meaning, will be our end. Our strengths as humans are not the objects we own but our resilience, compassion, kindness, sacrifice, love, and selflessness. It’s time for a global revolution on greed, or the world will yell, “Enough!” and by then, it will be too late. We should all ask ourselves, “How much pain is the Earth willing to endure?” before it’s too late.
Acrylic painting “Extinction” will exhibit at the Naperville Fine Art Center’s Public Art Competition, from March 19 – April 13, 2019. The reception will be on March 24 from 2pm-4pm with complimentary food and beverage.
Ari Poe 