Across history, art has been used to communicate important messages around the globe and the painting project aptly named Faces Of Rebellion is doing just that. Mark Skipper embarked on an international art activism project that aspires to elevate the voices and stories of climate activists, ensuring they don’t fade into mere statistics. The project showcases the faces and words of approximately 50 activists on its website, creating a visual and narrative tapestry capturing some of the essence of climate activism.

 

Mark Skipper points out an interesting distinction between AI and human art. He reflects that the imperfections inherent in human art allows for a deeper connection and emotional resonance than the perfectionism of AI art allows. He repeats the question “Does art affect people's hearts?” suggesting that human-made art has a rare capacity to compel individuals to pause, reflect, and appreciate the emotions conveyed by the artist done through reportage illustration. This is important because an artist's selection of scene elements is crucial, reflecting their surroundings’ impact on their creative process.

 

Mark Skipper's journey with climate activism has not been without challenges, as he navigated an uneasy relationship with the movement after delving deep into its complexities. Faces of Rebellion was a way for him to push through that, and spread awareness, it also was a way to calm the moral dilemma between not being comfortable with direct action and feeling you have a duty to do something to contribute. 

 

Inspiration for the first project struck after Mark participated in small workshops within the activist community. After encountering "Faces of Recovery," an initiative portraying individuals overcoming compulsive behaviour, the idea for Faces of Rebellion sparked. After seeing that, Mark described it as if “the name, it came from my larger self”. Once he had the name then the work really started. The strong feeling of duty towards this idea ensued shortly after and pushed him to get the ball rolling as fast as possible.  He set off to practise painting faces using the guiding hand of youtube and the internet to achieve it. And a few weeks later he completed his first portrait.

 

Due to his already diverse range of contacts within the climate activist community Mark was able to reach out to people that he could paint and capture their words, ideals, and experiences within the field of climate activism, whether that be disruptive action or peaceful protest. Using this network he is able to reach out to people and learn each of their individual stories. It takes around an hour to sit down in a cafe or their house and, hopefully, help separate individuals from a statistic. 


 

In essence, Faces of Rebellion is a conscious effort to humanise those involved in climate change protests and bring the individuals' stories into the light. You can find Mark Skipper and Faces of Rebellion at : https://www.facesofrebellion.org