Owen Krzyzaniak Geary

The Green Myth embodies the hypothesis that all future sexual politics and liberation is predicated on humanity’s relationship to natural resources. My practice uses biodiverse portraiture to respond to the anxious future of Earthly biology. Existing in the era of green capitalism and climate marches, I became frustrated with passive ecoactivism. The subjects of my oil paintings, semi-anthropocentric, synthesize not only different political ideologies but also different species entirely. Comparing hybridism to queerness, I can question the agency of neoliberal identity politics and destabilize the humanist experience in biology. In this piece, I utilize a slime-like shade of green in my pictures to mock a kind of “green” branding; the contemporary marketing strategy for eco-conscious products. The resulting collection situates all my subjects in a haze of glowing green, each form emerging from a cloud of biomass particles. My practice also includes mixing my own natural pigments. Because of the extreme health and ecological hazards posed by store-bought oil paint, I developed a mixture of natural products to synthesize my own paints, mediums, and thinners. Participating in the production of materials encourages the innovation that I value in my theoretical outlook and gives my work political agency in the wasteful creative industry.