Ray Knaub

Artist Biography

Over the course of the 1990s, climate change science and the resulting political and economic policies triggered global and national debates on the topic. Though scientists had been studying environmental changes leading to a gradual warming and reduced air quality around the world since the Industrial Revolution, several studies completed in the 1990s confirmed that human activity was a controllable contributor. As the United States Congress politicized the reports and declined to participate in the Kyoto Protocol, a global initiative, artists turned to the natural world with a renewed attention not seen in American art since the Hudson River School in the mid-nineteenth century. The bees shown in Ray Knaub's painting Prairie Bees holds an added layer of significance for a contemporary audience. As more and more species are listed as endangered due to habitat loss, disease, pesticides, and climate change, the decreasing numbers of critical pollinators such as the rusty patched bumblebee and American bumblebee are cause for concern and action.