ARTIST STATEMENT
This work from the series ‘Two Degrees Warmer’ narrates the story of climate change through the bodies of women. Each painting exhibits a solitary femme figure as an allegory for the Earth, with a particular cause or effect of climate change happening to her body. This personifies the climate crisis, showing all its immediacy and distressing reality. I pull medical imagery from my nursing experience to complete the metaphor. World leaders are driving the planet towards irreversible damage: a global average temperature increase beyond two degrees Celsius. The climate crisis exemplifies an inherently unjust system, creating suffering for the masses while enriching the minority.
Painting is my method of articulating my primary response to that reality: anger. Even still, I have hope for a better world. Women may bring to mind gendered archetypes of motherhood, or spiritual connections to Mother Earth, but another parallel exists – like the planet, women (including trans women) bear the brunt of climate impacts, but have little authority over global decisions. Where identities intersect, the unequal impact increases – women in the Global South are affected more rapidly and to a greater degree than the Global North; poor and working-class women suffer disproportionately across all borders. Two Degrees Warmer centers femmes as the storytellers, forming a challenge to male-dominated power structures. I created Two Degrees Warmer because I believe the climate crisis can be mitigated, if not reversed, and an equilibrium restored. Through my art, I support changing the narrative around climate change from individual nihilism to collective agency.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brooke Bartholomew is a figurative oil painter, nurse, and community organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work infuses a classically-inspired approach to the figure with contemporary sociopolitical commentary, bringing attention to important current events. She briefly studied figure drawing in Houston, TX before earning a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Texas Medical Branch in 2015. After working as a pediatric CVICU nurse for nearly a decade, she received her Master of Fine Art in Painting and Drawing from the Academy of Art University in 2023. Her main body of work, Two Degrees Warmer, explores the convergence of two distinct themes, feminism and environmentalism. Brooke’s art has been showcased with the American Women Artists, as well as solo and group exhibits in galleries in Minneapolis and New Orleans. When not painting, Brooke can be found organizing with her community or somewhere in nature.
© Brooke Bartholomew