Charcoal is one of my favorite mediums. It is hard to control, but the richness and depth it can achieve is stunning. Charcoal is pure, compressed carbon: one Earth’s fundamental elements. The carbon that we extract from the Earth can be used for art. But it can also be burned as fuel and consequently pollute our atmosphere.

These two charcoal pieces were made as comments on humanity. Our actions permanently perturb our biosphere. We, more than any other species in the history of Earth, have the responsibility to care for and create a positive future for our future generations and for our planet.

My work is inspired by a quote from Carl Sagan’s The Pale Blue Dot:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives…

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

~ Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Photograph taken by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8, 1968

Enjoy!

Creation by Deepa Rao

Mother Earth by Deepa Rao