Jenny McCarty introduced herself in one line: "I'm an ecologist and artist, and I create wildlife and nature art for people that love the outdoors." It took her years to be able to say that sentence out loud.
Jenny holds a master's in stream ecology and works in water resources in Colorado. She also runs The Sage Leaf Studio, where she paints wildlife with materials that are safe for the same waterways she protects in her day job. She joined me on episode 6 of (re)connect.
Pushed out of art
In high school, Jenny took advanced classes in both art and science. Like many girls in the 1990s, she was steered towards STEM and told that art wasn't a viable career. She chose science, and she loves it just as much.
Her career took her to field work in East Africa, New Zealand, Alaska and across the United States. As she moved up, the work moved indoors, into project management and screens. She hit a burnout wall. A career coach at her job asked her where she found flow. The answer was painting. After almost a decade away, she picked up a brush again and couldn't stop.
I recognised myself in this. In France, the science track in high school keeps the most doors open, so that's the path I took, all the way to biomedical engineering. My creative practice today is writing. I journal every day, and it has changed how I see my life and my work.
"I'm an ecologist and I'm an artist"
Calling herself an artist took emotional work. Jenny grew up with the stereotypes: artists don't make money, they're disorganised, they're bad at business. She now thinks those stereotypes say more about art education, which rarely teaches people how to run a spreadsheet, a business or a grant application.
Her science training gave her exactly those skills. So now, when she meets someone, she puts out her hand and says she's an ecologist and an artist, proudly. She also recommends The Artist's Way to anyone reconnecting with their creativity.
Conservation starts with people
Jenny lived in East Africa as a student, and it reshaped how she sees conservation. From a heated home in the US or Europe, it's easy to say people shouldn't hunt zebras or elephants. When the choice is between eating a zebra and your children going hungry, she says, people will eat the zebra, and she would hope to do the same.
So conservation has to come with real solutions: food, clean water, healthcare and local economies. Funding small businesses run by women makes a big difference, because communities tend to do well when women do well. As Jenny put it, "We're not going to succeed in conservation if we don't help the people first."
10% of every sale
From the day she launched her art business, Jenny has given 10% of every sale to conservation. The money goes to four organisations: the National Parks Conservation Association, The Nature Conservancy, the Jane Goodall Institute and Water.org. Jane Goodall is her hero.
Giving back can also grow far beyond a percentage. Jenny designed a National Park Pass sticker that went viral. More than 6,000 sold, raising close to $27,000 for national parks.
What's in your paint?
This is the part of the episode that surprised me most. Jenny calls it a taboo topic, because artists are often seen as people who always do right by the planet. In reality, artists are consumers like everybody else.
The acrylics and oils she grew up with are made from petroleum. Oils often need harsh solvents like mineral spirits for cleaning. When paint water goes down the sink, wastewater treatment plants struggle to remove it, and it ends up back in rivers and ecosystems. These paints also off-gas indoors: acrylics can release formaldehyde for up to six months, and oils can release VOCs for a year or more. Jenny didn't want to sell a painting that would off-gas above someone's couch for the next year.
She switched to watercolor and more eco-friendly materials. And she's careful not to judge other artists. She compares it to being a vegetarian married to someone who eats meat. It's her personal choice, and the world needs art, whatever people make it with.
Where her art and her science meet
Today Jenny is a watershed program manager for local government. Her job is to make sure there's enough water for farming, towns, recreation and ecosystems. People picture Colorado as green, but it's a desert state for most of the year, and the snowpack it depends on is shrinking with climate change.
That's why every paint she uses is safe to go back into the waterways. "My art and my science talk to one another," she told me.
Inspired by everything
Jenny jokes that she has self-diagnosed IBE: inspired by everything. She grew up camping in the Colorado Rockies and working summers on horse and cattle ranches, which is why horses show up so often in her paintings. Her family's roots in California pulled her towards the ocean too.
My favourite of her paintings is a whale shark. Whale sharks have unique spot patterns, like fingerprints, which scientists use to identify individuals. Jenny hid a small heart among the spots. I'll let you go and find it.
Listen to the full conversation
Listen to episode 6 of (re)connect wherever you get your podcasts.
Jenny made a free guide for anyone buying or making art: What to Ask an Artist About Sustainable Art, a checklist on materials, packaging and shipping. Find her work on Instagram at @sage_leaf_studio.
Want help sharing the purpose behind your work? That is what we do at Green Socials. Get in touch.
