Patricia Hansen

THE DISAPPEARING

The Disappearing Series is a visual statement of Love and heartbreak: a way to observe and honor the loss of earth’s creatures and their homes. A story of beauty lost.

This story awakened in me during an artist residency on Ossabaw Island off the coast of Georgia. Beyond the beach, the dunes and driftwood trees, there is a forest. It was there where I found a Mother Tree, an ancient oak. I wanted to live there, my back pressed against her sturdy, peaceful presence. Every breath brought me closer to a sense of belonging to something larger.

Years later, this story evolved during another artist residency at the Sanskriti Foundation Kendra outside Delhi, India. Traveling along the crowded highways, one sees among other species cows, goats, camels, buffalo and elephants: urban wildlife - and mostly given the right of way. Later, on the same journey in northern Thailand, I had an opportunity to spend time with a group of former working elephants, now rescued. We learned how to care for them and in the process develop a bond, a kinship. There were babies of different ages. The tender mother/child relationship was a joyous life-affirming thing to witness. The elephant family dynamics mirror our own in social complexity, the deep sense of family, and the highly developed emotional range.