For over fifty years, Philadelphia-based painter, photographer, and activist Diane Burko has translated her love for large open spaces and monumental geological sites into powerful and alluring landscapes. Her exhibition at the American University in Washington, D.C. (August 28 – December 12, 2021), titled Diane Burko: Seeing Climate Change 2002 – 2021, contained 103 paintings, photographs, and time-based media depicting mountains, oceans, snow and ice, glaciers, volcanos, and fires that address the growing impact of the climate crisis.
In 2006, Burko became one of the first artists to focus her work on the visible changes happening to the environment. That was the year the groundbreaking film An Inconvenient Truth came out, highlighting former president Al Gore’s campaign to raise public awareness on the dangers of global warming. An activist all of her adult life, Burko felt compelled by what she was learning to use her paintings as a way to both bear witness to what was happening to the planet and, at the same time, to show the astonishing beauty of what we stand to lose if we don’t make radical steps to mitigate climate change.
