I caught this great segment of PBS’s Art21 series: Humor. The last artist they focused on was Walton Ford and I was really taken by his masterful watercolor and prints!
Blending depictions of natural history with political commentary, Ford’s meticulous paintings satirize the history of colonialism and the continuing impact of slavery and other forms of political oppression on today’s social and environmental landscape. Each painting is as much a tutorial in flora and fauna as it is as a scathing indictment of the wrongs committed by nineteenth-century industrialists or, locating the work in the present, contemporary American consumer society.
Via Art21