Humankind

By Bella Turpin, aged 13 from Test Valley School

Humankind

I drew and painted a whale in the centre of the page with a smaller sea turtle below it. Both animals have a dark grey city skyline on their backs with thick grey smoke coming from the buildings. I did this to symbolise air pollution I put it on their backs to show that innocent creatures like these are hard to carry the weight of humankind’s mistakes and are suffering because of us. They are being dragged down and caught up in multiple variants of rubbish pollution. Fishing Nets for a common and made a threat to sea creatures. They kill and injure many species of ocean life, as well as other types of litter. The whale and sea turtles have ropes, fishing Nets, hooks, and plastic objects holding them back and dragging them down. We are stopping them from living a healthy and happy life by destroying their underwater home. Our ignorance and selfishness has led to their suffering. We are destroying earth and we are bringing animals to vision life with it.

I painted the piece in water colours so I could try and capture the transparency of the water. I used muted, darker colours and tones for the pollution and city skyline because I felt it would be best add to the mood of the painting. I hope that humankind can put a stop to the suffering and restore “God’s good earth”- both land and sea. My named my piece “humankind” (with the kind crossed out) because although we name ourselves humankind, I believe that many things we do are far from kind. Where is the kind in humankind?