The Pacific Northwest that became my home in 1992 appears, from the distance of 32 years, to be in a rapidly receding snow globe. It was a colder place. Blizzards during winter were not unusual. Indeed, they were expected. And everything looked a lot greener and wetter. The Pacific Northwest I presently live in has winters that are mild and summers that seem interminable. This month, for example, we experienced 16 straight days "of highs over 80 degrees." This was "the longest [such] stretch on record and [contributed] to the warmest first half of July on record." Broken record after broken record. Hot day after hot day. And smoke season is just around the corner.
Another development that has caught my attention in recent years is the increase in insects. When I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I could not get enough joy out of the fact that bugs were no longer a major part of my life. The insects in sunny Southern Africa were everywhere: under the bed, in the bed, above the bed, behind posters, on the veranda, buzzing in trees, flying into your eyes, climbing into your ears, eating you alive. The East Coast was hardly better. A considerable portion of my childhood in Maryland was made miserable by massive horse flies and swarms of mosquitoes. But out here? Almost nothing. This, too, sadly, is changing. Bugs love the sun.
On that depressing note, let's turn to the post-apocalyptic (though hopeful) paintings of a long-time resident of this region, Tim Wistrom.
Born on a US Air Force base in Germany, Tim Wistrom, who presently lives in Anacortes, settled in the Pacific Northwest more than 50 years ago. He began painting while attending high school in Seattle, and by 1986, he was "doing art shows in shopping malls" and enjoyed a stable career. These early works, done the "old-fashioned way" (brush, acrylic paint, canvas), captured what he knows best: "Boats, beaches, lighthouses, a variety of animals, aircraft, mountains, trains, etc." It was around this time, in the mid-'80s, that he decided to take a new direction and painted "Sea Escape." This work, which shows a desiccated and heat-cracked Elliot Bay, a carless ferry that came to grief before reaching (or soon after departing) Colman Dock, and an abandoned downtown under low and high strips of hazy clouds, turned out to be "a huge hit." It moved the art-buying public, which is surprising because it's so stark. This is our city after we are all gone, after our planet has become inhospitable. It also has about it dashes of the surrealism. The nearly waterless bay, for example, recalls Salvador Dali's famous melting clock.
Later, Wistrom would add water, lots of water, and wild land and sea animals to his post-apocalyptic visions. His most famous painting in this series, which continues to this day, is the iconic "Urban Renewal," with its dilapidated Space Needle, its abandoned Monorail and corporate towers, its thriving conifer forests, its eagles in the sky and grizzly bears in a rushing river that's teeming with salmon. Humans are nowhere to be found here. In another painting, ironically titled "Save the Humans," a pair of orcas pass a Kingdome that's fully submerged in a watery twilight. In this future, painted in the 1990s (the peak period for this regional legend), the sports stadium is not destroyed by explosives but by a sea level catastrophically raised by global warming.
Wistrom in an email: "I became (and often still am referred to as), 'that guy that paints Seattle under water.' Not really accurate, but that's what I hear." Wistrom doesn't like to paint people in general. He is not in the portrait business. And this explains the power and even effortless joy of his paintings. The world after the end might not have humans, but it is by no means dead or depressing. Life will still continue after our extinction. This kind of positive feeling is called post-humanism.
Wistrom:
I will always create surrealistic images. The ideas continue to flow from my imagination. These ideas are often called apocalyptic or the end. But take a good look at one of my paintings - my thoughts always float around a new beginning with nature taking over. Not an end, but definitely a change.
In the fall of 2005, I'm on the Victoria Clipper that's heading to Victoria Island. This is my Pacific Northwest. The one I want to exist until the end of all time. There are low and cold clouds. The air is watery. The Salish Sea is dark blue and misty, and the passing islands are covered by dark green trees. Will this soon be nothing more than a memory? Is our only hope the post-humanism of Wistrom's surreal but not gloomy paintings? His orcas by the dead sports stadium seem content.
You can see and buy Tim Wistrom's work at the Anacortes Art Festival, August 2-4. He also has a studio in La Conner that's open to the public.
