I have a half dozen or so medium-sized ants living in my studio kitchenette area. I never see much more than that many at a time. One or two are regularly there. I can’t say that I have watched or analyze their patterns, but I do notice some of the places they like to go especially the sink. It makes me think that they might be water gatherers. If they are anything like honey bees, they would be older members of the colony. I don’t know if there are any rogue ants, just hanging out and getting by. I don’t leave much food out if any but tea and spirits. They come around, check things out, hang in the sink, and seem to get out of the way when I turn the faucet on. I haven’t killed any of them. I see no reason why.
A few years ago, during my first experience in the summer of St. Paul Island Alaska, I had an awakening regarding our insect relatives which we are bound to in life like it or not. There are lots and lots of flies on St. Paul Island in the summer, and there are a handful of different kinds, at least at first glance. They seem to have slightly different characteristics and personalities, perhaps not unlike the flies here in the lower 48 but with seemingly pronounced features. The bigger flies are especially docile and sluggish; the little ones are especially jittery. But they’re all friendly, they seem to have a very different relationship with our species. I began to really appreciate the flies that came into my room. One night, I left the window open and forgot about it and the next day there were a fair few friend flies. I ushered many of them out of the room for their own benefit. I still lived with some, they didn’t get in my way, they didn’t bother me, their buzzing became almost hypnotic and therapeutic.
I’ve really started appreciating the wonderful mechanism of this life force. Of this this species and subspecies, this set of life beings that have existed for millions and millions of years and continue to find ways to flourish on all corners of the planet. I was very affected by the idea of how nonchalant we as humans are about killing these creatures. We set traps, we dedicate a fair amount of attention to their murder and destruction. They keep coming back, they never seem to be very affected by our attempts to eradicate them from our immediate existence. When I didn’t have the window open, while there were a flyer to that were in the room, there was never hundreds. The ants that I enjoy in my studio now, it’s been months and there have not been hundreds, there haven’t even been dozens. There can be a balance there; I respect them, they don’t get in my way and I can appreciate them enough to not allow just the fact that they’re alive and trying to stay alive to negatively affect my life, to raise a call to arms against a fellow living being.
It has been four years since I have wantonly killed the fly. Not sure about ants but surely I haven’t wantonly killed anything in months. Maybe longer. There may be mosquitoes or whatnot not but the truth is, I would rather be conscious and try to let things live. I don’t want to get bitten by mosquitoes, they have exhibited some risk of carrying illnesses that could be damaging and deadly. We don’t know if they carry stuff that actually is helpful or beneficial to us and I don’t think we’ve studied it in that way, we may benefit from that.
I don’t know if we took steps towards less killing of insects if they would find a balance and equilibrium with us like they seem to in my rooms in Alaska and my studio here, even in our house. It’s rational to think that there could be a catastrophic boom in life that ends up being quite a significant hindrance to our own existence at least as we know it. That’s not necessarily a fact. Insects have coexisted with other life not as the dominant form but as the persistent workhorses of nature for hundreds of millions of years. It is no small amount of power, of energy, of life force inherent in the creatures we encounter today. Who’s to say that there isn’t a greater consciousness guiding them through their own generations of life?
I have no doubt that this is interwoven with my approach to painting in its interconnected layers and trying to make everything even annoyances work. There are bugs in my paintings. There are literally insects sometimes that fly into them, sorry guys. But there are pieces of dirt and little things that fly around, specks and this and that that get in there and get in the way and become nuisances and there’s that similarity, but even those in the paintings I will use or allow in and work with its as elements of the painting universe. There is a similar approach. I do not allow them to dismantle my compositional discourse or my life as an Artist. Now if only interacting with all people were as fundamentally simple as interacting with insects.
There is always hope for all of us to see places in our lives where we can take steps towards a greater global harmony and take those steps one at a time. I love the relationship that I have developed with insects. I love saving spiders, though I don’t like scaring them. I’m trying to learn how to deal with that when trying to get them outside. I rather enjoy occasionally herding flies, ushering them out of the room, and I a skill that I think I might be apt to develop more. In these acts of acknowledgment of life within these other beings I think we can develop a much stronger connection to each other. It may help build a greater empathy not only to individual suffering but to our collective cause as a conscious life force and a species with the responsibility of planetary custodianship.