Kelsy Patnaude

The BIG Picture

Biscayne National Park, FL
January 7 - April 3 2022

Biscayne National park Gallery Show Features Four Artists Tackling Tough Topics on a Large Scale 

The BIG Picture: BIG Art on BIG Topics is now showing in the Biscayne national Park Dante Fascell Visitor Center Gallery. It features large-format photos, paintings, and drawings by artists DaveL, Sarah Ernst, Kelsy Patnaude and Pete Wintersteen all sharing interpretations of issues like endangered species, ocean acidification and sea level rise.

Three of the artists were MFA classmates at Lesley College in Massachusetts, and formed a bond over their environmentally-themed work. Painter Sarah Ernst lives in Virginia and creates contemporary abstracts in mixed media and oil. For this exhibition she chose to highlight the plight of endangered species. Rhode Island artist and competitive sailor Kelsy Patnaude takes inspiration for both passions from the sea by creating immersive panoramas using photo transfer and oil on canvas to highlight global sea level rise. Photographer (and Biscayne National Park ranger) Pete Wintersteen layers dozens of individual photographs to create oversized prints with incredibly sharp detail. Using seashells as subjects, he highlights how an increasingly acidic ocean is impacting marine life. Local favorite DaveL (a.k.a Dave Lavernia) is a South Florida Cuban-American muralist, painter and tropical street artist . He has created five pieces for this show featuring “limbs” of several of Biscayne’s endangered species who are “out on a limb.” 

Artist Statement:

While our population advances towards the sea, our coasts are facing the many threats of climate change. Mangroves help stabilize the shoreline and prove to be an excellent defense to the threat of storm surge due to extreme weather and rising sea levels. It is reported that mangroves prevented an additional $1.5 billion in direct damages in the state of Florida from 2017’s Hurricane Irma and that just 100 yards of their forests can reduce surge height from waves by 66%. Mangroves are not only important in storms but also help mitigate climate change by pulling considerable amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and storing them in their soils — up to four times as much carbon as other tropical forests, more than 6 billion tons of carbon a year[1]. Although we understand the importance of mangroves, locally and globally, we continue to actively destroy their forests at an increasing rate.

Using the panorama, a nineteenth century form of mass media as a resource, But Now It Was Time to Meet the Sea, transports the viewer to a seemingly hopeless experience at sea. Rising horizon lines, the ever-growing tumultuous sea, and the impending storm all work against the viewer’s harrowing and arduous journey to reach safety. Using motifs of the sublime the panorama integrates the viewer into the sea, combatting a changing climate’s harshest elements and our despairing fears about the future of our planet. 

[1] Sanderman, Jonathan et al. A Global Map of Mangrove Forest Soil Carbon at 30 m Spatial Resolution. 2018 Environ. Res. Lett. 13 055002