John DeFaro

visit BIG LAWN Project 

Green Paintings: Layering Years

My Green Paintings bridge past and present through accumulated color, texture, and natural material. This evolving body of work brings monochrome and minimalist traditions into tactile compositions shaped by repetition, memory, and close observation of the living world.

The crisscrossed strokes recall the ritual grids I mowed into lawns during my youth. What began as a pattern of upkeep now carries questions about conformity, appearance, and the pressure to measure up. Layer upon layer of water-based acrylic paint transforms that familiar geometry into a meditative record of time, attention, and change.

In recent Green Paintings, powdered dried Royal Poinciana seedpod casing gathered in Miami is incorporated into the paint, allowing particles from the landscape to become part of the painting itself. Natural variations remain visible across the surface. Nature is not merely the subject of the work. It is materially present within it.

The paintings also consider the American ideal of the manicured lawn and its ecological cost, including fossil-fueled maintenance, chemical use, and the replacement of diverse habitats with controlled expanses of green. Flowers, landscapes, garden life, and reclaimed organic materials offer another understanding of beauty, one grounded in participation rather than domination.

During the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself remembering summers on Eastern Long Island and a green picnic table beneath my grandparents’ maple tree, renewed each year with another coat of glossy paint. That remembered surface now anchors my studio practice.

My garden, my paintings, and this particular green have become places to gather, connect, and continue the work of care for ourselves, one another, and the Earth.

An original work from the Green Paintings series is now available through Green Religion.

View The Green Painting at the Green Religion Shop →