• hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes, natural disasters
• much invasive and scary disease
• um...lots

Not unlike everyone else outside the Katrina belt, I am obsessed with the images of uprooted houses, trees and trucks, people on rooftops, and the utter horrible loss. Maybe it's wrong to look at CNN photos and be pulled back to thinking about paintings, but while we have little control over nature we have lots of control over art.
All of that destruction, sad sudden change for millions (?) of people, and pain has me thinking also of how artists use images as catharsis and catalysts for action.
Katherine Taylor is an Atlanta based painter originally from Biloxi, Mississippi. She shows with Marcia Wood and for years has been painting images of the Mississippi coast (all casinos and neon lights or hurricane ravaged in 1965). I used to be in the same studio complex with Katherine and we'd have plenty of talks about home and family and the places we were from. She spoke of Biloxi and the Mississippi coast with a love and mixed emotion as the casinos and disparity between poverty and glitz grew, surface and substance. When the New York Times tells me Biloxi is practically gone , I gulp and hope Katherine's family is OK, I hope she is not shaking from the loss. I hope the eerie similarity between what she painted (the destruction wrought by the last horrible storms) and what has become real points only to a future in which we have sustainable coasts and more respect for factors outside our control.

I guess now, we can only watch the images, witness the stories, and give help in whatever way we can. Take good care of yourself and friends and family who've been uprooted,
Rachael