Language & Ecology | 2023 http://ecolinguistics-association.org/journal 1 Artistic expressions of language, ecology, and story: Language and landscape as explored through watercolor Dawn Wink Santa Fe Community College, USA E-mail: dawn@dawnwink.com Introduction This creative work began with no intention of publication, but rather my own attempt to deepen my understanding around ideas vital to my research. The watercolors displayed here are a reflection of a private journey to make meaning for myself. As I sank further into my research focused on language and landscape through the lenses of wildness, beauty, and imagination, I discovered the Indigenous theoretical framework of Lilyology, as created by Australian Aboriginal scholar, Dr. Nerida Blair (2015). Water lilies have long held a special resonance for me after discovering — and falling in love with — the importance of mother tongues as conveyed through water lilies by world-renowned expert on linguistic human rights, Dr. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (1981). Waterlilies entered my life when I learned of Skutnabb-Kangas and her waterlily metaphor. Skutnabb-Kangas’s work illustrates how waterlilies symbolize linguistic development, specifically the development of the mother tongue and its relationship with the acquisition of additional languages. Waterlily flowers on the surface represent languages. A single primary root grounds multiple flowers, which all depend upon that same root in order to thrive. In the same way, all additional languages depend on their primary root — the mother tongue language — to remain healthy. Spoken language is what floats above the surface of the water, like the waterlily’s leaf and flower. The roots of the language lie unseen beneath the surface, like the waterlily’s stem and root. A single waterlily root nourishes the primary flower (the mother tongue) and the other flowers that will stem from this single plant. This matters, as the waterlily of an additional language can float as beautifully on the surface as the waterlily of the mother tongue, making it easy to mistake the fluency in the additional language as being equally strong as the fluency in the mother tongue. But that impression can be misleading. If the primary stem (the mother tongue) remains deeply rooted and nourished, then yes, all of the interconnected flowers will thrive. If the primary stem of the water lily is cut, however, eventually all flowers will wither. The strength of all the flowers depends on the strength International Ecolinguistics Association Creative Work