July 11, 2015

The Future Arrives in Daubs of Paint

Painter Marcel Guldemond has tapped into something that's increasingly on my mind lately - art that normalizes science and our potential future.

By Glendon Mellow

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

Painter Marcel Guldemond has tapped into something that's increasingly on my mind lately - art that normalizes science and our potential future.

Here in Toronto, Canada, we've already had a number of NIMBY cases about windmills, and following Sydney, Australia-based Ketan Joshi (@KetanJ0) on Twitter, I've been fascinated by the resistance windmills generate almost as efficiently as they do power.

But Marcel Guldemond's painting doesn't resist windmills: it yields to their potential beauty in the landscape.

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*Windy Shore Blimp Service* © Marcel Guldemond. 24"x40", oil on wood panel, 2010.

Hesitating to compare one painter to another (having received this type of compliment, it's always inspires a mix of pleasantness and defensiveness in me), I suggested to the Ottawa, Canada-based Guldemond that his paintings seem like a continuation of the paintings by the Group of Seven.

Guldemond grew up loving the Group of Seven, and it shows in each brushstroke that he loves the northern landscape. He has plans to create a climate change picture book for children, so that parents can discuss the science and nature with their kids, Their children, in turn, may help push parents to address their own contributions to climate change as a household, I imagine in much the same way children may urge their parents to stop smoking.

Since featuring cartoonist Talcott Starr's Feathered Dinosaurs on Post-Its, and now with Marcel Guldemond's windmills, I'm on the lookout for these flagstones that we are stepping into the future, that science is catching us up in our general knowledge. It's the not the world we are already living in, but one we are never quite finished moving into, and it can be beautiful.

Please takes some time and explore Marcel Guldemond's artwork at these links:

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