Author Archives: BethShepherd

About BethShepherd

I am a visual artist, art history student, volunteer and business owner. Through my art I advocate for farm animal rights, protection of the environment, and social justice. Always active in the community, I try to "leave the campsite cleaner," a motto I learned in my childhood.

Sustainability and Umwelten of the Soil Food Web 

Posted by BethShepherd

In 2022 I began Plot 46, an art-research project designed to study regenerative agriculture at the Maple Hill Urban Farm in Ottawa. I wanted to test its principles and make some art that would enable me to share my findings. Regenerative agriculture is an evolving set of practices that eschews chemicals and tilling while prescribing the use of cover crops and compost to nurture a strong soil food web, which in turn, supports the production of healthy, sustainable food. I have been documenting my regenerative agricultural art-research in a number of posts on this website (artthatmakesadifference.ca), which first focused on animal advocacy in industrialized animal agriculture but has now been expanded to include food sustainability and agricultural ecology.
 
During my first year on the farm, I focused on human perspectives of the agricultural landscape. In the second growing season (2023), I shifted my attention to life within my plot lines, and developed materials for Beans, Beetles and the Soil Biome, an artist book of prints and poetry (to be finalized in summer 2025). In growing season three (2024), I took my research below the ground to focus on life within the soil. I produced a video poem entitled, The Unterwelt (Underworld) of Plot 46. Over the winter I planned to produce a large installation piece that would expand on the video.
 
The soil food web is a complex community of soil organisms that interact with each other and their environment breaking down matter, transferring energy, and cycling nutrients. The organisms can vary with location but almost always include bacteria, archaea, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and larger creatures like earthworms and insects. Figure 1 shows the taxonomic view of the generic soil food web I have pieced together.

Figure 1: Taxonomic View of the Soil Food Web

Thanks to my Studio Terrarium, I was fascinated to be able to watch the soil food web in action over the fall and winter months. I spotted nematodes, centipedes, tiny translucent snails, mites, worms, traces of fungal mycelium, and much more with just my iPhone camera. Since the soil in the terrarium came from my plot, it allowed me to better understand the organisms that comprise the soil community at the farm. See my earlier post on the Soil Shroud for further description of the Studio Terrarium.

Figure 2: Montage of Members of the Soil Community in my Studio Terrarium
 
At my studio I began work on my envisioned 9 x 9 foot x 2 foot 3D installation piece that would incorporate large prints, lights, video and a soundtrack. Wow! I must have been deluding myself that I was Steven Spielberg working on a big budget blockbuster. After a month or two developing large collagraph plates, I managed a couple of prints from each. Then disaster struck. I jammed the press, damaged my plates, and got ink on the press blankets. I realized my envisioned print piece was beyond me.  I had gotten carried away and needed to rethink my approach to the project. Think small, I said, like the organisms in the soil.  
 
In the fall of 2024, I enrolled in ecoartspace (eas)’s Sustain(ability) & the Art Studio course. With this encouragement, I pivoted and turned my failed prints into a different artwork. I decided to cut some of the prints into strips and weave them into a figurative soil food web. Prototyping, weaving, learning about and depicting soil organisms took a number of months. The following 15 minute video segment (20:45 to 35:27) describes my process as presented to my course mates and the eas audience on January 11, 2025.

Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/8OLzuPzRqHo?si=jo7IcqELdueH6Z-k&t=1245

Having decided to create a simulacrum of a Natural History Tableau (see note below), I worked on finishing the piece by adding paper roots, critter prints, leaves and other organic matter, and various embellishments to create an imagined microbial and macro-bial soil community. Figure 3 shows the trace monotype prints I made using critters seen in the Studio Terrarium as models. The individual images were cut out and collaged onto the woven surface.


Figure 3: Trace monotypes of various organisms observed in the terrarium
 
Finally, I pasted the work onto foam core backing and when it was dry, mounted it into a shadow box frame. With great satisfaction, I finished the Umwelten of the Soil Food Web Tableau in late February (Figure 4).
 

Figure 4: Unwelten of the Soil Food Web Tableau

Beth Shepherd, Umwelten of the Soil Food Web (2025)

Dimensions (framed): 24 X 36 X 2 inches
Medium: Print-based assemblage of printed kozo papers, Akua intaglio ink, clay pastel, organic materials, acorn-iron ink, wheat paste. Print techniques used: collagraph, drypoint, trace monotype
 
Note on Sustain(abiity) & the Studio: “Sustain(abiity) & the Studio,” is three-month online course led by @Anna Chapman in collaboration with ecoartspace and the Center for Art Education and Sustainability.  I had the privilege of working with an amazing group of eco artists, learning about sustainability practices, and sharing progress on our respective projects. For more information, see https://ecoartspace.org/Blog/13457812.
 
I am grateful to be part of a growing community of eco artists, who are moving towards more sustainable and often ephemeral forms of art which defies the traditional investment value of art. Instead, many like me conduct art-research projects in collaboration with the human and more-than-human partners to share knowledge with the community.
 
Note on Umwelt (pl. Umwelten): I have long been fascinated by the work of Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), a German biologist. Uexküll used the term Umwelt to describe the subjective world that an organism perceives through its senses. Each organism has its own functional space related to its lifestyle and bounded by its perceptual cues. Different organisms (including humans) experience the same environment differently. Each has its own worldview. (Jakob von Uexküll et al. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with A Theory of Meaning. 1st University of Minnesota Press ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Print.)
  
Note on the Natural History Tableau: Wanting to link my contemporary art projects with art history, I like to make relevant connections with the past. In the long 18th Century, the tableau played an important role in conveying scientific knowledge by integrating real elements with artistic touches to entice, entertain and educate audiences. Unlike paintings and drawing, real specimens were arranged in three-dimensional naturalistic settings to blur the difference between living and dead organisms. Like the naturalists of the past, eco artists use our work to entice, entertain, and educate audiences on subjects important to us all. (Valérie Kobi, “Staging Life: Natural History Tableaux in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” Journal18, Issue 3 Lifelike (Spring2017), https://www.journal18.org/1306.)
 

The Soil Shroud

Posted by BethShepherd

Since joining ecoartspace last year, I have been monitoring the Soil Dialogues group. They were working on a collaborative shroud to be exhibited at a soil conference held in Italy in 2024. Having missed that opportunity, I decided to conduct my own experiment to test the microbial activity of my regenerated soil at Plot 46.

The Cotton Strip Assay is a simple and inexpensive test that measures the amount of biological activity as determined by the degree of degradation of a standardized strip of cotton buried in the soil (1). I would test the effect of temperature on biological activity by comparing the relative decomposition of cotton cloth buried at Plot 46 over the winter with soil kept at ambient temperature in my studio.

Figure 1: Burial Day

On October 10, 2024, I buried two 32 X 14 inch pieces of old white sheet at two locations on my plot (Figure 1). I also took a bucket of soil which I put in a large glass apothecary jar. I buried a similar size piece of cotton cloth in it and planted some bean seeds in it to provide root exudates to any living organisms. My Studio Terrarium is pictured in Figure 2. I really enjoyed watching life in the terrarium and I kept my eye on the cloth over the winter. With longer days of spring, I was surprised to see the cotton cloth disappear almost before my eyes.

Figure 2: Studio Terrarium

The snow gradually melted and the frozen ground thawed. On April 24, I went to the farm to exhume . I was able to find one of two cotton cloths. It looked dirty, damp, d was stiff like a crust of bread (Figure 3). I dug around a second marker but found nothing. Then I returned the terrarium soil to the plot (Figure 4). It contained quite a few earthworms that had been living their secret lives away from the glass walls. There was absolutely no sign of the cloth remaining in the soil. I guess with all those hungry worms they just ate it up. Because I could not find one of my two cotton cloths and cannot draw any firm conclusions about the effect of temperature and the microbial activity in the soil.

Figure 3: Exhumation Day

Figure 4: Terrarium soil with worms and other biota returning to Plot 46

That evening I spread out the fragile cloth on my glass top table in my home studio. The cloth was so fragile, I realized I would not be able to rinse it, let alone print on it as I had hoped. So I made a video.

The Soil Shroud

Years laying in wait, tossing and turning, washing and drying, a cotton sheet’s repurposed as a drop cloth, cleaning rags, or a shroud.

Not a burial cloth but a buried cloth. A 32 x 14 inch piece of cotton sheet becomes an experiment in microbiology to observe in action the power of the soil biome.

The burial takes place at Plot 46 in mid October 2024. A shallow grave dug, the cotton shroud is laid to rest. The hole refilled, a garden label marks the gravesite.

Winter snows come and go like laundered sheets flapping in the wind.

Spring finally here, the buried cloth is exhumed. Rigour-stiffened, like a piece of stale bread, the earth-crusted clump is retrieved for further examination.

Under laboratory lighting, the congealed bundle is prised open.

Every stuck fibre resisting, the once strong surface is now splitting, threads unravelling, disturbed and disturbing.

Blobs of earth adhering, stained, discoloured, deconstructing; riven with creases, fissures and craters, the surface is ravaged by unseen life.

Biogenic carbon in the cotton cloth is candy for the decomposers — the bacteria and fungi, which in turn are food for other critters in the soil food web.

A few tiny snails, millipedes, and a nematode or two visibly struggle across the now hostile wasteland.

Drying, dying, traces of life extinguishing, the shroud, indeed, becomes a relic.

Reference:
(1) Nachimuthu G, Hundt A, Palmer B, Schwenke GD, Knox OGG. Cotton strip assay detects soil microbial degradation differences among crop rotation and tillage experiments on Vertisols. J Microbiol Methods. 2022 Sep;200:106558. doi: 10.1016/j.mimet.2022.106558. Epub 2022 Aug 14. PMID: 35977630.

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home!

Posted by BethShepherd

Four Species of Ontario Ladybugs 

This winter, I wanted to make a cute ladybug print to submit to the Ottawa School of Art’s biennial exhibition. As inspiration, I had a photo of two ladybugs sitting on a bean pod on my plot at an urban farm where I am undertaking a multi-year art-research project on regenerative agriculture.  Using iNaturalist, I learned that my ladybugs were not native but were Asian multi-coloured ladybugs, Harmonia axyridis (Figure 1a). Looking back through my photos, I found a different species – a seven-spot ladybug, Coccinella septempunctata, also an alien species from Europe (Figure 1b).

Figures 1a: Asian Multi-coloured Ladybugs on Bean and 1b: Seven-spotted Ladybug

Ladybugs, often called lady beetles, are members of the Coccinellidae family of insects in the order Coleoptera (Beetles). These species are generally brightly coloured, often red with black markings. As predators, ladybugs are natural control mechanisms for plant pests, especially aphids. Even the little alligator-like larvae are voracious consumers of pests. Even though native species are hard workers, as we have seen so many times before, agriculturalists wanted a “new and improved” version and foreign species were introduced.

I wondered where our native ladybugs were and why there were so many aliens on my plot. I learned that the native two-spotted ladybug (Adalia bipunctata), has significantly declined and the nine-spotted ladybug (Coccinella novemnotata) has disappeared from Ontario. The seven-spotted ladybug from Europe was the most common species in Ontario in the last decades but it too has now been displaced by its more aggressive Asian counterpart. Scientists don’t know for sure, but evidence suggests that the rapid shifts in ladybug populations could be the result of competition by the aggressive Asian variety, who may also be more more able to adjust to climate change and shifting agricultural patterns.

I remember red with black spotted ladybugs from my childhood. But I never counted the spots. I hope this blog will encourage you to count the spots on ladybugs you see. Keep an eye out for native species but the truth is, that in our changing world, any ladybug is better than no ladybug. If you see ladybugs, why not record your sighting on iNaturalist.

Four Ladybug Prints by Beth Shepherd at the OSA Mini Print Exhibition

Figure 2: Ladybug, ladybug, fly away Home! prints

So my one ladybug print turned into four (Figure 2). Each print illustrates the subtle differences between them:

  1. Nine-spotted ladybug (native to but believed to be extirpated from Ontario)
  2. Two-spotted ladybug (native to Ontario but rare)
  3. Seven-spotted ladybug (alien species; arrived in Ontario in the 1980s)
  4. Asian multicoloured ladybug (alien species; arrived in Ontario in the 1990s; currently Ontario’s most abundant ladybug).

To make the small series of prints, I prepared four drypoint 10X10 cm plates using scrap plexiglas with acrylic medium. I printed them à la poupée with chin collé (red paper additions) using Akua Ink on Somerset Satin paper.

The four prints will be part of the OSA 10th International Miniature Print Biennale Exhibition, March 20 to May 11, 2025 at the J.W. Stellick Gallery located at 35 George St. in the ByWard Market, Ottawa.

DROUGHT — a Set of Artist Books

Posted by BethShepherd
Figure 1 – Six unique artist books 

DROUGHT transcribes the drought-diminished landscape in Alberta Canada in the summer of 2024 as felt by me. Each of the five artist books (plus one artist proof), contains ten unique collagraph prints mounted in an “explosion book” format on acid-free cotton rag paper with covers made of handmade paste paper. Each book is roughly 10 centimetres square, expanding to approximately 30 X 60 cm.
Figure 2 – One book in expanded view

I made these six books in June and July in 2024 in response to a newspaper article I read called “Beyond a Reasonable Drought” by Tyler Dawson, Ottawa Citizen, June 1, 2024 (Figure 3). The article was illustrated with lovely images and was an easy read. BUT I found myself amazed by what was not said in the four-page spread.

Figure 3 – The first page of the newspaper article (Tyler Dawson, Ottawa Citizen, June 1, 2024)

The article describes the situation in much of Alberta this summer suffering under multi-year drought conditions. Dawson starts his article by saying “It is not a new dry spell out west. It’s been going on for years already, and could end up being worse than we saw in the 1920s, 1930s.” Drought in the prairies brings to mind the dust bowl, the depression and the hardships faced by displaced farmers and farm workers as depicted in the heart-wrenching photographs by Dorothea Lange and Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. In Canada the depression drought lasted from 1929 to 1937 during which time many farms were abandoned. It is widely understood that dustbowl conditions were created by a combination of climactic factors and poor agricultural practices. Afterwards, government jurisdictions introduced new management plans.

According to the Canadian Encyclopaedia, the Prairie region is the most drought-susceptible area in Canada. Written accounts refer to major droughts during the 1800s while paleo-records indicate that droughts, some extending for decades, occurred periodically over millennia. Since settler times agricultural practices have destroyed the natural resilient vegetation and current industrialized agricultural practices, even with irrigation, allow little margin of safety in times of drought.

Low annual precipitation is why the natural vegetation of the region is/ was grasses with dense root structures extending deep underground, as illustrated in Figure 4. These prairie grassland ecosystems have been in place for 10,000 years since the last glacial retreat.

Figure 4 – A photograph showing the difference in root structures of native grasses and agriculture crops (Reddit) 

In an interview, Trevor Herriot, author of a number of books about the Canadian Prairies, describes the prairie grasslands as “the most endangered and least protected” of ecosystems with 80-90% of native grasslands already lost throughout Canada’s three prairie provinces (Sims, 112-13). This tragic loss can be attributed to two factors. First 75% of the land is privately owned or privately managed and can be stripped away for agricultural use at any time. The second is that the loss of grassland is less visually dramatic than forest ecosystem yet prairie ecosystems are harder to restore than forests. Because monocrop grain fields or pasture landscapes appear similar to prairie grasslands efforts to conserve may be less fervent.

It is generally acknowledged that climate change, with warming temperatures and climatic disruptions, can be expected to exacerbate extreme weather, including drought and desertification. In his newspaper article, Dawson fails to mention that climate change might be a contributing factor to higher temperatures and more erratic precipitation patters that are exacerbating drought conditions. Nor is there mention that drought-stricken Alberta is home of the Tar Sands and the heart of the Canadian petroleum industry, both major contributors to Canada’s high carbon emissions and a root contributor to global climate change.

In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg expresses her belief that politicians and the press are failing to communicate the seriousness of the crisis, and that media are not performing their traditional role to hold politicians to account. Instead, she says “media has allowed the people in power to create a gigantic greenwashing machine designed to maintains business as usual.” (Thunberg, section 5.8). George Monbiot goes further in stating that media is the “industry … most responsible for the destruction of life on Earth” by denigrating climate change activists and diminishing the sense of urgency for climate action (Thuneberg, 5.11). This failure to be part of the solution is no doubt the result of a consolidation of newspapers and other media in the portfolios of wealthy capitalists. I conclude that Tyler Dawson’s “Beyond a Reasonable Drought” is an example of this failure to communicate the human factors of drought so not to ruffle any corporate or cultural feathers.

References:

Dawson, Tyler. “Beyond a Reasonable Drought”, Ottawa Citizen, 01 June 2024.

Hill, H. “Drought”. The Canadian Encyclopedia, 04 March 2015, Historica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/drought. Accessed 11 July 2024.

Sims, Jessica. “Q&A with Trevor Herriot, Author of The Economy of Sparrows,” Trail & Landscape Vol 58, No.2, Apr-June 2024, 110-116.

Thunberg, Greta. The Climate Book (e-book version), Penguin Press, 2023.

Reddit Image source: https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/comments/mdpfvd/prairie_grass_roots_vs_agriculture_roots/

Unterwelt of Plot 46

Posted by BethShepherd

Plot 46 is the eponymous name of an art-research project I am conducting on a 400 square foot allotment on Maple Hill Urban Farm in Ottawa where I explore the benefits of nurturing the soil food web while producing food and sequestering carbon. I wonder why so many of us have become alienated from the soil and wage war on nature with tilling, chemicals, monocropping, and genetic modification.

When I arrived in the spring of 2022, my plot was a weedy patch of spent Leda clay – slippery and sticky in the rain and hard as rock when it dried out. On the farm, synthetic chemicals are prohibited and an abundant supply of leaf mulch / compost is always available for use by allotment holders. I practice no-till gardening and I keep my growing beds always covered with mulch. Starting my third year, I am already seeing the soil transform into a rich brown loam. Nevertheless, I still feel like a stranger on this land with so much to learn.

I find myself caught up imagining life below ground – the mysterious underworld. The Unterwelt of Plot 46 is a poem I wrote to embody being (in the) soil. To evoke a sense of “soilness” without trying to be representative, I produced five experimental prints and integrate them with a spoken poem in a two-minute video. Click here to watch.

Here is the poem.

This poem will be published in Soils Turn, A Field Guide to Artistic Earthly Engagements, to be published in 2025 by ecoartspace. Press here to order.

Plot 46: Beans, Beetles, and the Soil Biome

Posted by BethShepherd

For two growing seasons I planted and maintained my 400 square foot allotment at Maple Hill Urban Farm. According to my master plan (see earlier post), the second year was about exploration of the underground soil food web – the unterwelt. In learning what the soil food web comprised, I realized there was more healthy soil than all things underground. The plants are the source of energy that fuels the food web though the root exudates. In return the soil takes up water and nutrients that the soil organisms produce or release. Beetles represent the life forms that occupy both above and below ground spaces, depending in their life stages. So I changed my title of second phase from Unterwelt to Beans, Beetles, and the Soil Biome. I have so much to learn about and to picture in my art, that I know I will remain in phase two for at least another year.

Meanwhile I am participating in a bookbinding swap with ten members of the local chapter of the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild (CBBAG-OV). This year’s theme is “a special place.” Since I am spending a lot of time at the farm during growing season and even more time in off season learning and researching about regenerative organic agriculture and the like, I thought that plot 46 was, indeed, my special place. These four images each 5X10 inches have been printed and constructed into an accordion format for exchange.

This spring we will exchange our “signatures” – the name given to a group of pages in bookbinding lingo. Other than size and theme, anything goes. Each of the ten swappers will receive ten signatures to be bound into a unique artist book. Later in the year we will meet for the big reveal of the bound books.

Plot 46 Year 1: A Year of Regenerative Gardening

Posted by BethShepherd

For the last year I have been working on an art-science project experimenting with regenerative agriculture at the Maple Hill Urban Farm on Moodie Drive, Ottawa. Last April I applied for and was assigned plot 46, an abandoned 40 X 10 weed-covered allotment in the community garden section of the farm. Plot 46 became my eponymous art-science project. 

My project has three goals: 

  1. “Return to the soil” to learn and practice regenerative agriculture. 
  2. Document my progress through art and writing.
  3. Produce some wonderful fresh food! 
Plot 46 on June 3, 2022

 

Regenerative agriculture is not a short-term undertaking. When I launched the Plot 46 Project, I understood it to be a multi-year commitment. Each year I want to take a different perspective on Plot 46 for my research and art. In year 1 I looked at Plot 46 from the eyes of the gardener. I researched regenerative gardening through the changing seasons and I made a series of traditional landscape prints of my plot, as seen in the Plot 46 Year 1 postcard.

Plot 46 Year 1 – A Pastoral Landscape

When I started out, I thought regenerative agriculture, or more correctly in my case, no-till gardening, would be easy. I learned many lessons in the year, the main one being that even no-till gardening is really hard work! I have prepared a project manuscript reflecting on my first year, describing my research, hands-on gardening experiences throughout the seasons, the many lessons I learned, and my preliminary plans for the year ahead. I also talk about printmaking and the pastoral landscape series. Click here to read the document.

I am anxious to begin the second year at Plot 46. The rental agreement has been signed and paid for, I have received my seed order, and have many seedlings popping up around the house as I await May 24 – our traditional planting day in Ottawa. 

Plot 46 at the beginning of April (2023)
Cherry Tomato Seedlings in newspaper pots

Year of the Rabbit

Posted by BethShepherd
Beth Shepherd, Three Rabbits–Ready, Set, Go!, Drypoint Prints

It’s time to be ready set go to “be the hope, be the light, be the love starting right now …”

from the song Ready, Set, Go by Royal Tailor 

The “Year of the Rabbit” started January 22, 2023 (Chinese New Year) and lasts until February 9, 2024. In the Chinese zodiac, Rabbit is the fourth animal in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac signs. According to a China travel guide, “the rabbit is a tame creature representing hope and life for a long time. It is tender and lovely. The moon goddess Chang’e in the Chinese legend has a rabbit as her pet, which stimulates the thought that only this creature is amiable enough to match her noble beauty.”

I created my Rabbit suite in 2013.  As a suite, they are called Ready – Set — Go! The first one – Ready or Rabbit I – takes after a large rabbit I had in my early twenties whom I called Bunny. Bunny was intrepid! After fathering many bunny babies, he became a documentary film star, and then retired to the country where he lived out a long and happy rabbit life.

I produced this suite of three drypoint rabbit images for a group exhibition called Just Animals that I co-curated at the Ottawa-Gatineau Printmakers Connective Gallery in 2013. The theme “just animals” can be interpreted in a number of ways, the most obvious that artists were being invited to submit prints with the subject of animals. From an animal advocacy perspective, it could also be a call for justice for animals. On a more philosophic level, just animals calls into question our perception of animals in relationship to humans. How many times have you heard “Oh, they’re just animals”? Animals today fulfill many roles: companion animals, food for humans, prey for predators, pests or threats, spectacles in shows and media (such as a magicians’ rabbit out of the hat), or just co-inhabitants of our neighbourhoods. Rabbits are interesting critters in that they fill all these roles.

Rabbits are known for their reproductive abilities – just think of Australia’s rabbit problem after the introduction of the European rabbit in 1859 so they could be hunted for sport (1). Despite the 200 million feral rabbits wreaking havoc in Australia, they are under ecological pressure in their native territories, as are many of the 108 lagomorph species on Earth (2). Lagomorphs (rabbits, hares and picas) are often keystone prey for other animals.

Happy Year of the Rabbit!

(1) National Geographic Society, “How European Rabbits Took Over Australia.”

(2) Emma Sharratt, “In the Year of the Rabbit, spare a thought for all these wonderful endangered bunny species,” The Conversation, January 19, 2023,

Cattle In Print, the Changing Pastoral – The Video

Posted by BethShepherd

I have been working on the topic of Cattle in Print, the Changing Pastoral, since taking a curatorial studies course in 2015. (Please refer to my earlier post to see my “virtual exhibition” resulting from my course research.) I find this topic so fascinating that I have returned to it a number of times — giving talks at Queens University, Carleton University, RIA, and most recently at the Northeast Popular Culture Association annual conference held in October 2022. My presentation was in the NRPCA Animals and Culture stream, chaired by Donna Varga of Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS. The Animal in Culture stream explores the complex and multifaceted intersections between animals, animal representations, society and popular culture. It is wonderful to have found a community of like-minded academics and artists who really do believe that animals are valid subjects of art, research, and academic discourse.

I decided to make a video of my presentation. You can see it here.


Abstract

Looking at art and visual culture through an ecocritical lens can shed light on humanity’s changing relationship with nature and the non-human world over the centuries leading up to our present planetary challenges. Framed in ecocritical art history, the paper examines the interplay between the visual representation of cattle and country life in the medium of the pastoral print and the implementation of modern agricultural systems. Rooted in antiquity, the pastoral representation of idyllic nature has soothed, amused and ameliorated anxieties over the centuries. With the Renaissance and the rise of mercantilism, printmaking, which is an artform of multiples, made the pastoral image available to wider audiences. With the socio-economic changes brought about by the agricultural and industrial revolutions in the 17th to 19th centuries and beyond, the popular pastoral print continued to wield political power by romanticising nature and idealizing forms of agriculture already obsolete. Since the mid 20th century and the “green revolution,” the pastoral trope, has been regarded as quaint and obsolete. Nevertheless, it remains ubiquitous and so ingrained in culture that it can no longer be detected. Promoted in literature, visual culture and advertising, the pastoral trope continuously bombards adult and child audiences, reinforcing outmoded values and a sense of entitlement. While some contemporary artists and ecocritical writers are working towards changing the visual rhetoric, the pastoral trope remains deeply entrenched in Western visual culture and an obstacle to mounting a collective response to climate change.