Coral Communities

Watercolor, 16” x 20”, 2024

I loved embracing a more vibrant palette to capture the above and below the surface of the Pacific Islands in this painting. The green islands are inspired by images of Curaçao, and cutting across below them is a graph showing Sea Level Rise averaged over 12 Pacific Islands from 1990-2020. In the shallows, the diverse community of life is shown. The coral reef is sitting on a second graph, which shows the estimated percent decrease in the regional average cover of live hard coral for the Pacific region. The coral transforms from colorful to bleached across the page, to represent this ongoing effect.

Sea Level Rise Data: http://www.climatedata.info/impacts/sea-levels/pacific-islands/
Supplemented with NASA data

Coral Data: https://gcrmn.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Status-of-Coral-Reefs-of-the-World-2020-Full-Report.pdf