2025

GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL EXHIBITION

KAREN BUTTWINICK

KAREN BUTTWINICK

(Albany, California)

Vanishing Rosettes

encaustic, photographic imagery on panel, 16 x 20 x 1.5 inches

$600 + $42 tax + $70 shipping fee  =

$712.00 Total Price

Artist Statement:

Bathed in the searing light of the African savannah, crowned by the sun’s halo, a leopard meets our gaze—its rosettes fading like the ecosystems it calls home.  Vanishing Rosettes asks an urgent question: Why isn’t more being done to cool our burning planet?

Climate change is unraveling the delicate balance that sustains East Africa’s leopards. As droughts intensify and vegetation shifts, these elusive cats are pushed into shrinking, fragmented habitats. Prey grows scarce. Competition sharpens. And drawn ever closer to human settlements, leopards risk deadly conflict—often killed for doing what they must to survive.

The loss of herbivores from climate stress and overhunting deepens their plight. Though leopards are famously adaptable, the speed and scale of environmental change may soon outpace even their resilience.

For me, creating art is both sanctuary and signal flare—a way to hold space for sorrow, but also to stir awareness. With this image, I hope to evoke not just beauty, but urgency. May it move us from witness to action.

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