Mother Nature Watches Earth Day Drag Storytime Painting

Mother Nature Watches Drag Storytime on Earth Day Painting

I asked my audience on Instagram (www.instagram.com/bardicpainte…) what I should paint next, LGBTQIA+ issues or ecojustice? It ended in a tie, so I decided to combine them. Because we really need to address the climate and raise awareness of any climate action that we can take against global warming.

This Earth Day painting depicts Mother Nature approvingly watching a drag queen reading a story to children who are on break from helping clear rubbish. In the middle of everything, Mother Nature holds a posture vaguely similar to the birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, but She is ultimately intended to be a universal divine mother figure of the natural world.

The drag queen story time (and the Three Graces of Greek mythology as men in the background) for all the kids who are on break from clearing away plastic waste is very much my response to the deranged louts (often calling themselves "Christians") who have barged into many a drag queen story time, insulting and threatening the readers and scaring the children who were ironically just fine until said intruders decided to "save" them from the drag queens.

Drag is simply performative art and, while some of their routines are decidedly meant for adults rather than children, they are ultimately about self-affirmation and self-acceptance in addition to commentary on current events and are quite unlikely to intend harm to anybody, let alone to children.

And for that matter, I swapped the genders of a number of the kids from the models that I used; the trans community has been senselessly persecuted in recent years and it's as absurd as it is cruel. Trans folk don't control transportation or commerce, they haven't started any wars or caused harm to anybody, let alone children. If you're not going to help somebody, then leave them in peace.

For the central figure of Mother Nature, her features, necklaces, and headband are based on the Bush peoples of Southern Africa; since the Bushmen are the human population that has existed the longest and therefore has the most genetic diversity, why not model Mother Nature after a woman who has all the genomes of humanity running through her veins?

I try to follow my mom's advice to "paint what I want to see", to manifest what I want to see in the world. And I very much want to see ecojustice as well as a sense of unity among humans, and certainly solidarity in resolving the biggest existential threat that we have yet faced.

I want to thank @cottonbro @planete.elevene #ronlach #mizunok and @yankrukov for the use of your photography! I greatly appreciate your work!