Neil Young 4

24 x 18 – 7 color silkscreen – edition of 150 – I stared at Neil Young’s name nearly every day for 3 months on my iCalendar leading up to the deadline for this. I felt a responsibility to push myself on this art and not repeat elements from a past Neil print I’ve made. In the end I settled on illustrating some of my favorite lyrics from After the Goldrush: “flying mother nature’s silver seed to a new home in the sun”. To me, the song is about mankind disrupting the balance of nature and ultimately causing the downfall of our planet. As Earth crumbles a few chosen ones leave the planet to colonize a new home on the sun. The most challenging part was on how to represent mother nature. I wasn’t sure whether to illustrate her as an ethereal being or as one of the animals living amongst the trees. Making mother nature an animal would preserve her purity I felt. I pictured her as an owl watching over all of the forest guiding the chosen ones to their new home.