Helen Klebesadel

Native Roots Run Deep
watercolor on paper
30 x 22 in.

My visual concerns run the gamut from careful representations from nature, to poetic, symbolic and sometimes political representations of nature and human nature. My art making is both my creative and intellectual work. It is how I think. It has been how I have learned to deeply examine and understand the world and my place in it. My paintings most often examine our place in the natural landscape and our relationship, as humans, to nature. The representations present the position that what we do to the earth’s body we do to ourselves and what we do to ourselves we do to the earth. My goal is to encourage us to pause, observe, and re-consider power and consequences of our actions in the world, socially, culturally, politically, spiritually, and creatively. In particular, I seek to overcome the doubts we are socialized to believe, that there is room for us all to thrive, and that we can make a difference in the world as individuals, as artists, and as one part of larger engaged communities of people willing to work together to a create the inclusive world we want to live in.