Politics and Other Aggravations

 I have been making ‘activist’ art since the Gulf War began in 2003 – multi-block color linoleum cuts about the oil wars in the Middle East, U.S. gun violence. floods and fires. As COVID-19 cracked open the fracture lines of our society, my outrage focused on climate change and climate refugees. I print and over-print multiple linoleum blocks and handprints to make images about our concentration camps on the southern border and refugees pushed out of their homes by violence, crop failure and ‘natural disasters.’

 I have made productive use of forced isolation in our relatively safe backwater. One unguarded interaction - a hug, a breath, an angry encounter in a parking lot - could destroy that relative safety even now in the third year of the pandemic.

 Pandemics fade, eventually, leaving massive change and disruption. Climate Change, War, Famine, Flood, Fear go on forever. I use my own handprints in my work to say “I was here.”

These activist and political images are mostly original, hand-pulled relief prints – a mixture of linoleum cuts, typing, pencil and handprints. Some watercolors and a colored pencil drawing are included, as well. Except for New Orleans Exodus, all are unique impressions. Most are available. Price on request. 

The first print - Death Toll Rising – documents one of our many oil wars that feed climate change. Climate change leads to political and economic instability and climate refugees. The great El Norte is a place of danger, death and incarceration. Even for its own citizens. 45,000-gun deaths in 2020 – a reasonable price for unfettered gun ownership. Gun sales rise with every atrocity in response to fear, fury and festering civil decay. Our laws and institutions are increasingly turned against us by people we should be able to trust. I weep for our country as I work.

Nancy R. Davison, December 2022