Water Station

The first significant indication that something has gone horribly wrong and the human race is in real peril will be when water shortages reach critical and irreversible proportions. Extreme long term drought makes just getting enough water for simple human needs an ordeal and eventually leads to extensive food shortages. The United States saw this in the dust bowl years. Elevate that crises to a long term global scale and there are grounds for serious concern that millions of people would die.

When I visited Egypt in the 1980s, I saw makeshift dilapidated tents with water cans out in the desert. I was told that government water trucks periodically filled the cans with water for the people who lived there. I saw no one for miles in any direction, only endless sand dunes.

Painting developed in part from photographs by Dorothea Lange in 1930’s Oklahoma.