#greg lindquist

OIil, stainless steel on linen stretched over panel, 24 x 24 in

Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in

Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 in

Hope Gangloff, Stems (Greg Lindquist), 2011

Greg Lindquist in his studio with Duke Energy's Dan River I (both 2014) and Duke Energy's Dan River II, 2017 (📸 by Martha Tuttle)

“The whole impetus for the series was the coal ash spill that happened on the border between Virginia and North Carolina in 2014, when something like 39,000 tons of ash were accidentally released into the river. With this spill, the ash sat on the surface of the river for about 24 hours and created these pleasing monochromatic swirls. It interested me as visible evidence of the event, but also how the evidence itself seemed to signify a certain beauty of something that has ugly consequences for ecosystems and human health. I was also interested in tracing the relationships of responsibility at a governmental level. In other words, I was looking at the collusions—and I’ve been using this word for the past four years, well before anything else—of profiteering electric companies and bodies of state regulation. With regard to the North Carolina spill, the governor at that time was Pat McCrory, who had worked at Duke Energy—the company responsible for the spill—for 30 years. As I traced the relationships and the environmental regulations that had been rolled back, it all came from the fact that McCrory had put a lot of his colleagues from Duke Energy in positions at the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. And then on top of that, it’s more appealing for these companies to spend millions of dollars in legal fees fighting the regulations and fighting the clean-up efforts than to just clean it up.”—Greg Lindquist for Portrait of the Artist