climate emergency Archives

August 2, 2023 — Comments are off for this post.

Earth Cries

High waves of toxic

water drown the land

Dead eyes,

the earth cries

The sun colors the morning

in the hues of dead trees

on the banks of greed

How high may become

the price the future

will have to pay?

Earth Overshoot Day 2023

As of today, humanity lives by stealing from future generations.

And have no illusions: the middle- and highly prosperous countries have been living for weeks to months by stealing from poor countries.

We live on credit, and there is no way to pay it back: the earth is unable to regenerate what we consume the rest of the year.

And just so you realize: this has been true for decades. So the debt of you and me is huge, beyond all comprehension.

Conscience

But we silence our conscience by pretending that we start with a fresh earth every year on January 1.

I will help you out of the dream, or rather, make you realize that we are in a nightmare: the earth has not been clean and fresh for many years, and on many "issues" the damage is beyond recovery.

Disasters follow each other faster and faster. Is payback time knocking on our door?

Think about this, when you place your next order on the Internet for non-essential goods, when you throw away something that can actually be used for years to come, when you replace something because it is no longer fashionable, when you eat more than is good for you, when you use and eat things that burden and pollute the earth in an unaccountable way....

Tell me, who will pay your debt to the earth?

Earth Cries High waves of toxic water drown the land Dead eyes, the earth cries — *Earth Cries*

All You Need Is Less

Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke, on what we lose when we continue on the destructive path of ever more…

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

Tags: abstract realism, all you need is less, climate emergency, degrowth, earth overshoot day, earth overshoot day 2023, ecocide, jacob berghoef, less is more, save the earth, save the oceans, save the planet, surrealism, surrealistic digital art, surrealistic impressionism, surrealistic photography

December 27, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.

Trees Cry

Thick clouds of black
smoke darken the sun
Eyes tear,
trees cry
The sun colors the evening
in the hues of the flames that
eat tree after tree
How high may become
the price the future
will have to pay?

I feel it as my mission to make people aware of the beauty, power and simultaneously fragility of nature. Yet at the same time, this sometimes feels like hypocrisy because I am part of the society that is causing the destruction of the habitability of the earth. Even though I do my best to live simply and keep my carbon footprint considerably smaller than "the use" of 1 earth.
At times when I feel that, I also feel an urge to create a work with a poignant message....

Trees Cry - Impressionistic surrealistic digital artwork by Jacob Berghoef — Trees Cry

General info on this artwork

This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.

For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.

The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.

Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

December 27, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.

Birds Cry

Thick clouds of brown
smoke darken the sun
Eyes tear,
birds cry
The sun colors the evening
in the hues of the poison that
factories vomit
How high may become
the price the future
will have to pay?

I feel it is my mission to make people aware of the beauty and at the same time fragility of nature. At the same time, this sometimes feels like hypocrisy because I am part of the society that causes the destruction of the earth's habitability. Even though I do my best to live simply and keep my ecological footprint considerably smaller than "the use" of 1 earth.
At times when I feel that, I also feel an urge to create a work with a more poignant message....

Birds Cry - Surrealistic impressionistic fine art digital artwork by Jacob Berghoef. Climate crisis, climate emergency — Birds Cry

General info on this artwork

This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.

For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.

The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.

Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

Tags: birds cry, climate art, climate awareness art, climate crisis, climate emergency, destruction, factory, impressionism, impressionistic digital art, Impressionistic photography, jacob berghoef, Jacob Berghoef FineArtPhotography, nature, smoke, surrealism, surrealistic art, surrealistic impressionism

October 4, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.

Drowned Earth: Swimming In Tears II

While trees cry
fish shed their tears
in endless waves

'Swimming In Tears II' is an artwork in my project 'Drowned Earth'.
In this project I show you how I see the earth of a century from now. A fusion of the forests and the oceans, with hopefully in the distant future a rich ecosystem that has managed to adapt to the new circumstances.

Will there still be room for humans in that world?
Yes, I think there will be. Will there also be room for consuming Western man? No, unless they learn to be one with nature again. It will take several generations before that happens. I sincerely wonder whether the generations of Western man who are now living on earth will be able to bring about this transformation. More time is needed for that, I fear....

General info on this artwork

This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.

For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.

The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.

Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

Tags: abstract photography, abstract realism, abstract surrealism, climate action, climate art, climate crisis, climate emergency, dark, drowned earth, fine art photography, jacob berghoef, less, light, modern art, pure, surrealism, surrealistic art, surrealistic impressionism, swimming in tears

September 13, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.

Drowned Earth: Living In The Other World

You ask me why I live
alone in the mangrove forest,
at the edge of the infinite sea.
I smile, I am silent
until even my soul grows quiet:
it lives in the other world,
one that no one owns.
The trees bloom.
The waves keep coming.

Inspired by the poem ‘I Make My Home in the Mountains’
Li Po (701-762 )

Mangroves, just as seagrass beds and coral reefs, keep coastal zones healthy. Mangroves provide essential habitat for thousands of species. They also stabilize shorelines, preventing erosion and protecting the land — and the people who live there — from waves and storms.

There are many threats to mangrove forests: sea level rise, tourism, land reclamation for agriculture, shrimp farms, pollution from fertilizers from agricultural areas and waste from cities, logging... just to name a few.

The consequences are enormous. Not only because, like all trees, they hold a lot of CO2 both in their biomass and in the soil of the forests, which is released when the forests are destroyed, but also because they house very fragile ecosystems that are lost when the trees disappear.

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Living In The Other World - You ask me why I live alone in the mangrove forest, at the edge of the infinite sea. - Surrealistic digital photo art, part of the collection Drowned Earth by Jacob Berghoef — Living In The Other World

General info on this artwork

This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.

For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.

The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.

Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

Tags: abstract surrealism, climate art, climate crisis, climate emergency, digital art, fine art photography, impressionistic digital art, jacob berghoef, mangrove forest, pure, surrealism, surrealistic art, surrealistic impressionism, transformed photo

July 11, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.

Scorched Earth

[scorched]
adjective

UK /skɔːtʃt/ US /skɔːrtʃt/

slightly burned, or damaged by fire or heat

While the ice caps are melting and the oceans and seas are warming and being robbed and poisoned, man on land is not sitting still either. Or perhaps better to say, that's where the misery begins, because that's where man has settled and does most of his 'ingenuity'.

The Western world should really be called the 'land of never enough'.
There where consumption was invented, at the same time as growth for growth's sake and the 'creation of shareholder value', or profits that are never high enough.
Our addiction to money is so strong, that we are prepared to exhaust the earth for it, to destroy plants and animals and to make the world of the children and grandchildren of humanity hot, in many places even unbearably hot.

Many people even think (still!) that the consequences of global warming will not be too bad. After all, we are smart, a technical solution will be found that will allow us to continue living the way we are used to...

Meanwhile, larger and larger parts of the earth are being scorched. Scorching by the ever-increasing temperatures. By spraying poison to make the yield of intensive agriculture as high as possible. By the emission of poison into the air, land and water as a by-product of our endless consumption. By the fires that rage around the world day in and day out as a result of increasing drought. By fires started by man to turn even more nature into monoculture with endless fields of genetically engineered crops on exhausted, diseased soil.

You all know by now that a text like this accompanying a work of art is not quite my style. But sometimes you just have to stand outside, look up at the sky and scream really loud...

A cry for climate action...

'Scorched Earth' is a new digital artwork in my collections 'Secret Places' and 'Digital Art’↗️.

Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page↗️.

Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke, on what we lose when we continue on the destructive path of ever more…

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

June 20, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.

Travelers

Dark sounds fill the void
A strong back breaks the waves
Travelers of the deep

But do humans never succeed in saving a species from extinction?
Of course they do, and the humpback whale is a good example.

The humpback whale is a species of baleen whale. Adults range in length from 14–17 m (46–56 ft) and weigh up to 40 metric tons (44 short tons). The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is known for breaching and other distinctive surface behaviors, making it popular with whale watchers. Males produce a complex song typically lasting 4 to 33 minutes.

Humpback whales typically migrate up to 16,000 km (9,900 mi) each year and are found in oceans and seas around the world. They feed in polar waters and migrate to tropical or subtropical waters to breed and give birth. Their diet consists mostly of krill and small fish. Unique among large whales, humpbacks use bubbles to catch prey.

The humpback was a target for the whaling industry, like all other large whales. Humans once hunted the species to the brink of extinction; its population fell to around 5,000 by the 1960s. While numbers have partially recovered to some 135,000 animals worldwide, entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships, and noise pollution continue to affect the species.

Food chain

Whales are at the top of the food chain and have an important role in the overall health of the marine environment. They absorb carbon throughout their long lives. When they die, the sequestered carbon goes with them to the ocean floor, literally a carbon sink!. It is estimated that a humpback whale sequesters about 30 tons of CO2 on average, taking that carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries.

Whales are some of the ocean's most fruitful gardeners. When whales poop, they drop a load of crucial nutrients into the 'topsoil' of the ocean. Their poop fertilizes the surface of the ocean with nutrients that are fundamental to the health of ocean ecosystems, the global nutrient cycle, and the carbon cycle.

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Travelers - Dark sounds fill the void ~ A strong back breaks the waves ~ Travelers of the deep - Surrealistic digital photo art, part of the collection Drowned Earth by Jacob Berghoef — Travelers

'Travelers' is the seventh and last new artwork in my collection ‘Drowned Earth’.
In this collection of new artworks, I show how I see the earth from, let's say, a few centuries from now. An amalgamation of the forests and the oceans. With hopefully in the distant future a rich ecosystem that has managed to adapt to the new conditions.

General info on this artwork

This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.

For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.

The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.

Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page and here.

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

June 19, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.

Drowned Earth: Blooming Forest

Bright sunlight dances
Coral reefs breathe new colors
Old forests in bloom

Would coral reefs stand a chance in the future, protected by drowned temperate rain forests in warmed waters in now too cold areas?

Is it an odd assumption that climate change does not destroy nature, but radically changes the conditions to which nature is slowly adapting?

Coral reefs are an important ecosystem for underwater life, protect coastal areas by reducing the force of waves striking the shore, are the source of nitrogen and other essential nutrients for marine food chains, and assist in carbon and nitrogen fixation.

Threats

Coral reefs are threatened by increased ocean temperatures and changing ocean chemistry. These threats are caused by warmer atmospheric temperatures and increasing levels of carbon dioxide in seawater. Besides that, pollution, overfishing, destructive fishing practices using dynamite or cyanide, collecting live corals for the aquarium market and mining coral for building materials are some of the many ways that humanity damage reefs all around the world every day.

More and more climate scientists agree that the average global temperature increase will be towards 3 degrees Celsius. One and a half degrees is no longer feasible, especially with all those new plans for oil and gas extraction with 'energy independence' as a lame excuse. Where we should drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels, an increase is to be expected in the next 5-10 years.

Many people seem to think that natural laws do not apply to them and their cleverness will solve all the problems. And so the still-increasing bill of our greed and stubbornness is passed on further and further to future generations.

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Blooming Forest - Bright sunlight dances ~ Coral reefs breathe new colors ~ Old forests in bloom - Surrealistic digital photo art, part of the collection Drowned Earth by Jacob Berghoef — Blooming Forest

General info on this artwork

This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.

For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.

The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.

Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page and here.

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

Tags: abstract photography, abstract realism, abstract surrealism, climate art, climate crisis, climate emergency, coral reef, dark, extinction, extinction rebellion, fine art photography, jacob berghoef, less, light, minimalism, modern art, pure, surrealism, surrealistic art

June 15, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.

Drowned Earth: Bloom

Pulsating blue
float gently between the trees
forest in bloom

I show how I see the earth from, let's say, a few centuries from now. An amalgamation of the forests and the oceans. With hopefully in the distant future a rich ecosystem that has managed to adapt to the new conditions.

Will there still be room for humans in that world?

Yes, I think so. Will there also be room for the "civilized" Western man? No, absolutely not, unless they learn to be one with nature again. It will take several generations for that to happen. I sincerely wonder if the generations of Western man now living on earth will be able to bring about this transformation. It will take more time for that, I fear....

The title of the third artwork in this new collection is 'Bloom'.

When huge numbers of jellyfish, or any plant or animal, appear suddenly, it is called a ‘bloom’. Jellyfish in a bloom can number in the millions.

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Bloom - Pulsating blue float gently between branches forest in bloom - Surrealistic digital photo art, part of the collection Drowned Earth by Jacob Berghoef — Bloom

General info on this artwork

This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.

For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.

The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.

Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page and here.

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

November 13, 2021 — Comments are off for this post.

Sad Song

Empty words echo over the earth
Lost in broken promises,
a sad song
whispers between the trees

'Sad Song' is a new artwork in my collection 'Secret Places'. It is inspired by the recent fruitless attempts by world leaders to arrive at decisive measures and quick actions to combat the climate crisis.

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Sad Song - Empty words echo over the earth. Lost in broken promises, a sad song whispers between the trees. - Impressionistic fine art forestscape photography by Jacob Berghoef — Sad Song

Prints are available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page, ask for a quote or contact me through a message.

Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke, on what we lose when we continue on the road of 'never enough'.

Published by Jacob Berghoef in Portfolio

Tags: abstract realism, climat crisis, climate emergency, dark, fine art photography, impressionism, Impressionistic photography, jacob berghoef, Jacob Berghoef FineArtPhotography, light, modern art, Photographic impressionism, pure