Robin McClintock

This painting on paper pays homage to industrial disregard for the natural environment. The rural landscape of Appalachia has been irrevocably altered by the extraction industry. What is visible now is as much about what isn’t there as what we see. My paintings document lost evidence, early industrial history and changes in the natural environment as a byproduct of “progress”. I work exclusively on paper using graphite, pigment, watercolor, coal ash and wax. My training as a printmaker is evident in my surfaces, building up layers of paint and wax, erasing and scraping marks away, creating incised lines, tracking changes as the image develops.

As a New Yorker living in rural Appalachia, I have learned to read the landscape. Comparing the built urban environment with the natural landscape, forever altered by the extraction industry, focuses my current work. Specific industrial architecture and extraction activities, 1880-1910, clearcut the landscape and effected the local wildlife drastically. Once removed, the environment is forever changed, and much is lost.