Jayne Holsinger:“The National Parks series began in 2010, after inheriting a trove of vacation photo albums and slides from my Indiana farming grandparents. My grandfather was an amateur photographer and documented his travels with my grandmother through all forty-nine continental states, by way of their visits to the National Parks. I began using these photos as references for my painting.
Collectively, the painted series highlights how extraordinarily beautiful and diverse our continent is in its varied geologies, wildlife, and vegetation. And while set in previous decades—and sometimes featuring my grandmother camping in the wild—contemporarily it reminds us of how fragile these national treasures are. Currently, glaciers are melting and receding; animals who knew no boundaries have less land to roam; and in some parks water, such as the Colorado River, ceases to flow in abundance.”
“National Parks is a gouache painting series I began in 2010. In the wake of the catastrophic wildfires of 2020, I have shifted my theme to include more wildlife and the effects of climate change in my painted imagery. NP21 suggests dying trees in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. NP16 is set in evening at the edge of Wollemi National Park in NSW, Australia. There wildfires destroyed massive areas of land, devastated wildlife, and burned right up to the compound walls of BigCi, the artist residency in Bilpin, New South Wales, where I’d visited in 2017.”