Zaria Forman’s pastel drawings are noteworthy not only for their sheer size and hyper-realistic quality, but for their subject matter and the thought that goes behind them. With the aim to document climate change in pastel, her large-scale drawings represent some of the most remote landscapes in the world.
As such, her work often takes Forman around the globe (at least when traveling is permitted). So far, Forman has flown with NASA on several Operation IceBridge missions over Antarctica, Greenland, and Arctic Canada. Documenting these landscapes using a camera, she later recreates them in her studio, paying great attention to detail—so much so that the end results often look like enhanced photos.
“I hope viewers feel as if they’ve been transported to the landscape they’re looking at,” Forman reflected in an interview with Visual Atelier 8. “If they can experience the landscape in the way I did, it is my hope they’ll fall in love with it the way I have. And when you love something, you want to protect it.”
According to Forman, climate change is arguably the largest crisis we face as a global society: “I feel a responsibility as an artist to address this in my work, especially since I’ve had the rare opportunity to travel to remote places at the forefront of the crisis,” she says.
As her work invites the viewer to explore the remote landscapes of places like Antarctica and Greenland, these places become more familiar and approachable, making the climate change crisis less abstract and pushing it to the forefront. These are the kinds of messages we can get on board with!
