Nessie

Introducing Nessie. This painting takes its name from the mythical Loch Ness Monster. Nessie is about life in lakes and rivers. Things are not going well: biodiversity is in decline. A third of all freshwater species are threatened with extinction. If the Scottish water monster does exist, it could be one of them…

Nessie is the second in a series of ripplescapes about the state of our planet. The series is inspired by and builds on the ‘climate stripes’ – a colour map of annual temperatures designed by climate scientist Ed Hawkins to visualise global warming. Nessie uses the derived ‘biodiversity stripes’ to visualise the decline of freshwater species over the past 50 years.