Artivism - Turtle Island, Fiji
For a hundred million years sea turtles have moved through the world's oceans. Quietly. Purposefully. Ancient beyond imagination.
On Turtle Island in Fiji, where the local culture holds these animals as sacred, I encountered one of the most unexpected and moving uses of art I've ever witnessed. To protect the turtles from hunters and poachers, the island carefully catches them, paints their shells, and releases them back into the sea. A painted turtle is no longer desirable to those who would take it. The art becomes a lifesaver. Literally.
I was invited to be part of it.
Painting directly onto a living turtle, feeling the warmth of its shell, the patience of its stillness, was unlike anything I'd experienced. A co-creation with one of the sea's most graceful creatures. Presence meeting presence.
It clarified something I'd long felt: art awakens empathy. And empathy allows change. This is what I mean when I use the word artivism, art not as decoration but as activation. A quiet force for care.
My greater vision has always included this. Art that cultivates compassion for our oceans, for the animals within them, for the blue planet we share.
Open your heart and let love in.
Photographed at Blue Lagoon, Turtle Island in Fiji.
Some works arrive as statements. This one arrived as a whisper. Slip into the Silence, You'll Find Me There is an ink-on-paper SoulCircle in soft greys and lilac, held within a gentle circular form that doesn't ask for attention so much as offer a pause.