Artists have a history of responding to the issues of their time. Perhaps this is inevitable. Seeing something in all its complexity and detail forces a confrontation with reality. Goya responded to his horror of war with graphic images. Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ was a visceral response to the devastation of war and it’s effect on innocents. When confronted by the Nazi’s demand to know if he had painted the picture, he reportedly countered, ‘No, you did.’ Many artists of the present time respond, with increasing unease, to the state of the environment. We have an innate and spiritual need to be connected to nature. Our interconnectedness with nature informs our choice of subject matter when this relationship is threatened. Subject matter includes our responsibility to sustainable resource management and minimising our impact on the environment. If beauty should be, ‘convulsive’ as the surrealists believed, artists are using this paroxysm as a metaphor for the state of the planet. Art acts as a form of sign language and the signs suggest an increasing unease and frustration with the current situation.