Top Climate Art of 2022

A personal year in review. How I quit my full time job to become a climate artist

Hi friends!

This year, my entire life changed. 1 year ago, I was working full time at a climate startup as Head of Operations. Today I am a “climate artist,” a title I have made up for myself. 

Some of you may have found me on Twitter and assumed I’ve been doing this for a while, but really it’s been only a year. I started painting in January 2022 with a personal goal to paint a watercolor a day for 100 days. When I did this, it was just for fun and I didn’t plan on painting about climate. I started painting about random stuff. The first week I painted about Theranos, Dry January, and Thich Nhat Hanh. 10 days in, I painted about kelp and carbon sequestration and posted it on Twitter. Simply put, that painting changed my life. It got 200 likes, more likes than anything I’ve ever shared considering I had 400 followers at the time. I decided to paint the rest of the 100 days about climate change. 

3 months into painting, I decided to quit my job and go full time on art. I had started doing private commissions for climate startups, VCs, and nonprofits on top of working full time. It was a real leap of faith, but I figured in a worst case scenario I could just get a “normal” job again.

As I sit here scrolling through my art from the past year, I am so proud to see all that I have created and learned. I came in with a beginner's mindset to climate. I don’t have a background in environmental science and I think it’s served me well. Each piece I create, I think of as my own personal flashcard to a new topic in climate science. 

Some things I’m the most proud of this year:

• Reaching 10K followers on Twitter

• Publishing a coffee table book about climate art- A Brighter Future

• Working with some incredible clients- The Guardian, Rocky Mountain Institute, Carbon Collective, Undaunted K12, Logical Buildings, and many more 

• Becoming an Artist-in-Residence at MCJ Collective 

• Being featured in The Verge and Washington Post

• Having an art show at Vital 

I want to keep this fairly short and sweet but have lots more to share in the New Year. For now, happy holidays and thank you so much for being a part of this whirlwind of a year!