Art of Warning ◊ Art of Witness

Mary Ciani

Art of Warning: Painting the future. Mary Ciani’s work radically changed a decade ago when the world changed around her. As Bastrop burned and Harvey swirled over a hot Gulf and slammed into Houston, she urgently changed subject, medium, and palette. Instead of painting what she always did – metaphors of lives lived in time – Ciani drew back focus to a much wider view of future worldwide destruction. As glaciers began to melt from global warming she drew the Flood Drawings. When the cause and effect of the climate crisis became clearer, she turned from the falling blue waters of the early Deluge Paintings to the cascading black oil and red blood of a deadly future. On Italian watercolor paper, she drew 150 one-a-day Postcards from the Future mailed back to us as warnings.

Art of Witness: What we once feared is now upon us. The climate crisis showed up early! Our aggressive burning of oil and “natural gas” (c. 90% methane) continues to add to the heat-trapping blanket of carbon dioxide in our air. So now our weather swings like a pendulum – from unexpected hail storms and tropical rains that bring floods and grow plants doomed to burn as tinder in the following drought of manmade hellish summers. Climate disasters strike worldwide now: fires ignite Australia, Canada, Texas, California…. When Los Angeles burns in January, 2025, Ciani’s palette changes to hot yellows and cerise. What can we do? What will we do? Why do we not do it?

Mary Ciani enters an arena of artists making urgent images that cut through the noise of pop culture and lies.

From her studio in Texas she looks out to doves and cardinals, a pond and bamboo forest, but sees only deluge, oil, blood, and fire.

Deluge, Black Oil, Snowmelt, Shattering Rock, 4’ x 12’ Polyptych of four 4’ x 3’ canvases, Golden paints, 2020-2024