The Last Cool Skies: An Artist Project by Lyndell Brown and Charles Green

Linking art and ecology can mean two significantly different things. First, it may suggest art that takes the objects of ecology as its theme. This, most frequently, means art that is about ecological health, including climate warming. Second, and less often, it may suggest that art can be imagined from the methodologies of ecology rather than from the approaches of art history. The first two parts of this article are deliberately selective literature reviews of each approach, followed by a third part that traces the three-decade trajectory of an artistic collaboration that embodies both. (In full disclosure, I am one of the two artists.) What might such a self-consciously ecological art practice look like? These sections aim to provide the background and critical context for a response to this question, and that response is the final section of the article, an original artist project: The Last Cool Skies (2026) by artists Lyndell Brown and Charles Green. These artist pages are intended to be the principal focus of this article and are presented as research in the form of visual art across this journal’s pages, as original research contributions in themselves and not as ancillary or as simply illustrations to this article’s text.