Lorenzo Quinn continues to speak volumes with his art about the relationship of humans and the planet Earth. This recent work, “Stop Playing”, beautifully expresses the anthropocene, the era of human dominance over the planet in which we now live.

As the artist writes, “The world seems as if it’s in the hands of a capricious child, who plays with it without care for the consequences any games may cause. The slingshot represents our natural resources, which are being stretched beyond their limits. We can damage them or lose hold and launch the world into perdition; if we want to survive as a race, we must release tension.”

Humans are only 200,000 years old on this 4.5 billion years old planet. We are such a young species, with such an outsized impact on this planet. We are changing the course of the future; we cause the extinction of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of species a year, and we’ve cancelled the next two ice ages with our CO2 emissions.

We must release the tension, we must start living like we understand how fragile this Earth really is. After all, it’s the only one we’ve got.

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