Blue Sailor is like a monster made up of many little monsters to form a giant one. In this painting I am exploring the correlation between our increasingly polluted oceans (symbolized by the microplastic and plastic toy sailors) and the rising ocean acidification and warming ocean temperatures which create ideal environments for jellyfish which out compete the environmentally challenged krill for plankton (krill have been found to use polar ice sheets as nurseries which are disappearing at an unprecedented rate). This will have severe consequences for all the marine mammals and other species that depend on plankton as part of their food chain. I've chosen By-the-wild Sailors or Velella, velella hydrozoa to represent my jellies because of the sailor connection and their great color) and it's no accident that I picked a human form for my monster!

Despite finding swathes of these By-the-wind Sailors washed up on the beach and collecting and categorizing hundreds of pieces of microplastic in beach clean-ups, I don't think I would have come up with this image if it wasn't for the amazing photography of Annie Crawley (author, speaker, producer, scuba diver, educator and photographer) whose photographs of Velella and microplastics inspired me to put it all together. You can visit her website at: www.anniecrawley.com. Thank you Annie!