When I found out about the Carry the Earth project, I wanted it to pass it through my hands and pay homage to the idea. This connective reminder is a wonderful way to trigger positive change in my own life, as well as passing along that reminder to others.
I am an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. My artwork is not specifically about the environment, but I am a big proponent of taking personal responsibility to correcting the course for life on this planet in whatever ways possible, leaving a lighter carbon footprint and being mindful daily of our long term effects on ourselves and others, what we leave behind and how. I create cues for myself to remind me of what qualities I would like to inhabit. My new work is related to positivity as a response to what is going on currently in our country. The hand-painted words on canvas list all of the adjectives that I aspire to being or that I think are important to strive towards, including ones that relate to being a better earth-dweller and caretaker of animals, the environment, and all of natures wonders. I believe just paying attention to the power of words can cause revolutionary change.
The reason I thought this would be relevant to Carry the Earth, is that we are very much a product of our thoughts, and so to use visual cues to undo negative thoughts can actually rewrite the old patterns and create new beliefs, which in turn can have a huge impact on your life and the lives of those around you. There’s a term for this and its experience-dependent neuroplasticity. “Thoughts become things, choose the good ones,” is a powerful quote by Mike Dooley that touches on this idea. Another by Jen Sincero is, “What you focus on you create more of,” and yet another by Michael Beckwith is, “Energy goes where attention flows.”
These paintings overwhelmingly and humorously play with the idea that new and inspiring words hitting your conscious, but especially your subconscious mind, every day may actually shift your way of thinking, which will shift your actions, and you will become more of a benefit to this planet.
Bettina Hubby