Endangered Species (painting series as print)

print of nine original acrylic paintings, 16" x 16" pearl print, with single black foam mat 20" x 20"

My painting series Endangered Species began a few years ago with a single, deeply personal image: a photograph of my dog, Evie, her mouth wide open—howling, yawning, crying out. That ambiguity is central. Is she in pain, in protest, or simply trying to be heard? As I returned to her image, she transformed into a kind of universal figure—a witness, a mourner, a siren. Not merely a canine, whose domestication places it at the cusp of the human world, but a stand-in for something larger: the voice of the vulnerable, the silenced, the endangered.

That image became the anchor for a series of paintings where the central figure is placed into a distinct scene of ecological, social, or existential crisis—melting polar landscapes, war zones, wildfires, floods, biohazards, or economic collapse. All of these emergencies are not isolated events, they are symptoms of a system in crisis, they form a pattern—a chorus of warning that grows louder and more urgent.

Endangered Species is my attempt to hold space for that scream—to make it visible, impossible to ignore. It’s also a reminder that the fates of the human and nonhuman are inseparable. We are not exempt. We are not separate. We are one endangered species among many.