David J Emerson Young

David Young is a painter and sculptor from Bloomington, IN. A graduate of Indiana University, Young had a long and storied career in advertising and design, including the founding of Young & Laramore Advertising in Indianapolis where his creative work earned national and international acclaim.

As a lifelong artist (one who scribbled sketches in the margins of his grade-school math books) in additions to his paintings, there are dozens of Young’s public sculptures adorning the Indiana State Museum as well as other locations in his home city of Indianapolis.

Nearly all of Young’s paintings start as drawings. The drawings, which Juniper Art Gallery offers both framed and unframed, come from his subconscious - the place he trusts most. It is as if his subconscious has a direct line to his drawing hand. He often doesn’t know what the subject will be until the lines reveal it well into the drawing. Once it’s recognized, he develops the image into a finished drawing, and sometimes they then develop into a painting. Juniper Art Gallery rejoices in the detail, whimsey, humor, and imaginative nature of David’s pen and ink drawings, and is proud to represent his artwork.

David’s recent (grand scale) Global Warming Painting Series was first exhibited at the American University of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq where high-quality giclee prints are now on permanent exhibit. The paintings are indeed large scale, so Juniper cannot host the originals, but we are pleased to offer high-quality (unframed) giclee reproductions from the series, available in-gallery and on-line.

Artist’s Statement:
The Global Warming Series 

The point of departure-- the inception of the Global Warming Series was a trip to Mount Baker in the Snoqualmie National Forest in Washington State, where I hiked up to the basin of the Coleman-Deming Glacier and gazed upon this dense, turquoise blue glass-like body of ice with deep crevasses, being slowly deformed under the stress of its weight. In places, waterfalls were rapidly flowing over the glacier, intensifying its melting process. It was so beautiful it took my breath away, and yet, I was witnessing the sinister demise of a glacier-- the purest form of water, the source of all life on Earth.

Human activities are at the root of this phenomenon. Since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions have raised temperatures, and as a result, glaciers are rapidly melting, calving off and crashing into the sea, or retreating on land, forming new bodies of water.

The Global Warming Series is an education-driven painting exhibition that emphasizes scientific accuracy, while also focusing on the psychological aspects of Global Warming and Climate Change, including human anxiety and fear over potential catastrophic events, and potential end of life.

Art has the capacity to change the way we perceive an event or a phenomenon, and, through shifts in attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors, it can inspire collective, creative actions that address the perils of the Earth, and seek to heal. “Art has a unique place from which to build a different world, having the capacity to build a whole of mind experience of understanding, compassion, reasoning, and hope”. Dr. Marc Gopin

This painting series addresses three specific topics of global warming—the causes, the effects on nature, and the after effects on humans. Each of the eighteen painting subjects in the Global Warming Series were reviewed, edited and approved by Andrew J. Weaver who was a lead author in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the group that, with Al Gore, won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. The paintings are intended to provoke awareness of the threats of global warming, and aim to inform viewers, and to inspire action.

For each painting in this series, I began by creating a color drawing that served as an architectural rendering for the painting. My process involves examining each subject, whether it is the clear cutting of forests or seawater warming, and exploring what I call the complexity of emotional opposition—how a viewer can simultaneously behold both the beauty of nature and the devastation that is occurring."

Artist David J. Emerson Young is an Indiana native and Bloomington resident. His collection of paintings that form the Global Warming Series serve as a unique expression of the role that the arts can play in environmental awareness and compassionate reasoning.

Listen to a WTIU conversation about David's Global Warming series of paintings