Greta, 20 x 20”, mixed media acrylic on canvas

This piece seemed to reveal its meaning through the process of making, as many of my pieces do. My work always seems to find its way back to growth, change, and the natural world. The solemn penguin facing away, carrying the name Greta on its back, emerged and felt too charged not to speak on. 

I don’t often get political in my work, at least verbally, but lately silence feels like a form of complicity. Greta Thumburg's activism comes to mind due to the name’s presence in the work. Her refusal to turn away from the climate crisis has always embodied persistence and courage. Recently, reports surfaced about her detention by Israeli forces while aboard a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, and accounts of mistreatment that followed. Whether or not one calls it captivity in a formal sense, it’s hard not to see it as symbolic of how voices for justice are often restrained, punished, or silenced.

This painting doesn’t aim to make a new political statement, but it does stand in solidarity with Greta’s ongoing fight for the earth, for people, and for truth. The penguin’s turned back mirrors a kind of collective avoidance, while Greta’s stance reminds us that confrontation, however uncomfortable, is necessary. Making this work became a quiet act of witness and a reminder that both art and activism ask us to speak when silence would be easier.