If you look closely at Derek Gundy’s salmon paintings, something interesting happens: the off-canvas world recedes and in its place a vibrant, watery world expands. Follow the brushstrokes with your eyes, let the intensity of color invite you in and you’ll find yourself swimming in salmon dreamtime, the place these fish go when the sun sets and the water darkens. Stay as long as you like. Return as often as you can. In the dream, the salmon will always be there, waiting.

The ability of art to evoke mystery and take us places we could not otherwise go, suggests artists have an important role to play in modern society’s effort to transition to more sustainable ways of living. On a recent afternoon, Deirdre Duffy chatted with Derek about salmon, sustainability, and the challenge of being an ecologically engaged artist.

DD: When did you start painting salmon?

DG: I got interested in painting salmon about five years ago, when I moved to the Pacific Northwest. I had a similar attraction to lobster in Maine, where I’m from. Lobster was one of those things you had to manage, in terms of fishing, in similar ways to salmon. In Maine, the lobstermen – and women – made a decision to address the lobster’s decline by only fishing from January to May. I was pretty impressed with that: it was one of those things that inspired me to get involved with these issues. And when I moved here, I didn’t know a lot about salmon, but I was really fascinated with them, with what they do, in terms of their reproduction. You begin to realize how fragile the whole thing is … there is something very mysterious about it, how they come from these tiny streams, go out to sea, and know how to go back. It’s a miracle what they do.

DD: Is there a backstory to your salmon paintings?

DG: Yes. They started as part of a narrative about an artist who loses his partner – wife, girlfriend – to a Tsunami wave on the beach … The artist goes back to the same beach, and calls the salmon out of the water … He imagines the salmon, and the woman comes back as a brown pelican. I was writing, and from that, I got interested in the fish. Some of the scenes are of Second Beach in La Push. That’s how I got started … I wasn’t intending them to be used as a sustainability thing … but it almost seems like the most appropriate thing for them.

DD: Does the process of creating these kinds of images allow you to discover unexpected connections between salmon and people?

DG: Well, we’re all kind of caught up in this big engine that drives society, aren’t we? Survival is a big issue, I think, for everyone. That comes up. And the border between life and death, perhaps preventable death … even for humans these days, we’re not certain to continue on … and that’s the thing: the connection I sense between salmon and people is that if salmon could literally be gone in a very short while, that puts things in perspective. It could happen to us, too.

DD: Do you think artists have a role to play in helping society transition to less resource-intensive ways of living? What are some of the things you think artists can do to nudge people in a different direction?

DG: Artists are in a tough spot. They can express what they perceive is happening, but the trick is to get people to change. Some people are influenced to change as a result of art, but this is a little bit bigger problem – artistic expression is the easy part. There’s a lot we can do to educate, but I think ultimately it’s about money, and being connected to the people who can turn it around. I don’t have the answers, but I’d jump at the chance to gather artists together to raise awareness and try to get something done.

To learn more about Derek’s work, or to contact him, visit www.derekgundy.com.

Sustainability and the arts: a resource list

Interest in sustainability is growing in the arts community. For more information, and to find out what artists in other communities are doing to co-create a sustainable world, visit:

• Sustainability & Contemporary Art http://artandsustainability.wordpress.com/

• The Forum on Arts, Sustainability & Society http://sachakagan.proboards37.com/

• Environmental Art & New Media Technologies http://ecoarttech.net/sustainablefutures/

• GreenCityBlueLake www.gcbl.org/blog/marc-lefkowitz/where-art-science-sustainability-meet

• GreenMuseum http://greenmuseum.org/membership_index.php

• BeyondGreen http://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/publications/Beyond_Green_CatalogueWEB.pdf

• Trashformations http://www.alachuacounty.us/government/depts/pw/waste/watchers/slideshow.aspx