Yes! I have taken for granted growing up in a country that for the most part of my life, appeared to my innocent (and possibly ignorant) mind to be pristine and untouched. I remember so vividly walking along the beach at Opito Bay in the Coromandel a year after the Rena container ship accident near Tauranga. I was picking up packages of food and other items that were washing in on the tide and littering the beach. I had never seen the beach covered with so much waste. It was just awful. This stunning beach I had grown up on felt marred and dirty for the first time.
It gave me a visual blast of how the currents and tides that are so important to our ecology, can also carry our destruction far and wide.
Now, with the world wide web, we are so used to seeing graphic photos of pollution of the land and sea, that we almost gloss over them to try to protect ourselves from the despair of the situation. It’s heartbreaking.
I guess I try through my work, to remind the viewer of these small delicate pockets of nature, that need our help and protection. To remind us what we are losing due to our ignorance.