Wangari Maathai Portrait in “Women and Water Rights”
Jan 30th, 2010 by andreaharris
“Women and Water Rights: Rivers of Regeneration” will feature two of my portraits along with works from other artists at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Regis Center for Art, University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, from February 23 to March 25, 2010. For more information, see: http://womenandwater.net/
The exhibit will show my portraits of both Wangari Muta Maathai and the late Dorothy Stang. Both women are environmental activists who courageously fought for conservation.
I’d like to tell you a bit more about Maathai here. I discuss Dorothy Stang in this blog entry.
Maathai, 69, was born in Kenya, educated in the U.S., and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” In 1976, she founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental organization that has helped rural African women plant over 30 million trees.
Maathai taught women to grow trees because deforestation was stripping once-verdant lands bare. The trees contributed green spaces, firewood, and in the case of fruit trees, food for poor people.
Maathai’s work with the Green Belt Movement led to Kenyan government opposition, which she courageously fought. In one public demonstration she and other protesters were gassed and beaten, and Maathai ended up in the hospital, as this award-winning YouTube video shows: Wangari Maathai “The Tree Lady” by Will Levitt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjnWy6uOP3Q
Maathai and the Green Belt Movement continue to be active today, not only with tree planting but also other environmental work, such as building dams made of sand to conserve Kenya’s scarce water supply. Their efforts give Kenyans more water for everyday needs such as drinking, cooking and bathing.
See more about Maathai and the Green Belt Movement on their website at: http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/
My painting of Maathai appears above. Incidentally, if you do a google search for images of her, you’ll see that she is almost always smiling. Her positive energy must be a great asset in her life and work for the environment.