Transcript:
Three years ago, Nicole Kelner was working for a climate tech company and feeling burned out. To relax, she challenged herself to paint a watercolor each day for 100 days.
Kelner: “And they were just meant to be relaxing activities after work, but it turned into me painting about climate change solutions.”
When she shared her paintings online, they went viral. And four months after picking up a paintbrush, Kelner quit her job to make climate art full-time.
Many of her paintings help explain climate solutions.
She’s diagrammed how ground source heat pumps work, illustrated a poster of vegetarian protein sources, and painted sheep grazing under solar panels to show how agriculture and solar can coexist.
But sometimes her images are more whimsical – like a painting of a wind turbine that says, “Renewable energy? I’m a big fan.”
Kelner: “I want to make art that visualizes the world we want to live in.”
And she’s helping others do the same by teaching online workshops about using art as a tool for climate communication.
Kelner: “My art has reached millions of people personally. … My goal with this course is to inspire other people to create art that could impact even more millions of people.”
Reporting credit: ChavoBart Digital Media
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