Editor's note: The artist's essay that follows accompanies the 'online unveiling'—exclusive to Common Dreams—of Shetterly's latest painting in his "Americans Who Tell the Truth" portrait series, presenting citizens throughout U.S. history who have courageously engaged in the social, environmental, or economic issues of their time. This painting of author and gardener Joan Gussow, one of the first experts to advocate that we "eat locally, think globally" is his latest portrait of those who have dedicated their lives to fostering healthier lives for people and more sustainable systems for the planet. Posters of this portrait and others are now available at the artist's website.

Joan Dye Gussow will be 87 this year. I visited her last August at her lovely home on the Hudson River north of New York City. The house, designed by her and her late husband, the painter Alan Gussow, abuts the road at the front. Most of Joan’s energy, however, goes into the narrow lot running behind the house down to the Hudson. The lot is all garden—vegetable and flower beds and fruit trees. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy decimated her garden, drowning it under six feet of water. At 83 she rebuilt her garden beds, raising them a foot and constructing a small dike to withstand frequent flooding. I did not paint Joan Gussow for the Americans Who Tell the Truth series  because she is an octogenarian heroically struggling to save her gardens from climate change and its effects on a massive river. I chose to paint her because for longer than almost anyone else in this country she has been preaching the necessity—for human health, ecological health, and energy health—of local, organic agriculture. About Joan Gussow, Michael Pollan, author or The Omnivore’s Dilemma and whose portrait I have also painted, said, “Once in a while, I think I’ve had an original thought, then I think and read around and realize Joan said it first.” The New York Times calls her, “The matriarch of the eat-locally-think-globally food movement.”

An idea whose time has come is a curious phenomenon. What prepares a culture to adopt a new idea, an idea that precipitates a change in values and lifestyle? A change in language, a change in perceived wisdom? A change in how we instruct and raise our children?

Community gardens, young people returning to the land, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs),  the mainstreaming of organics, farmers’ markets, the obvious sanity of local growing are no longer revolutionary. The realization that the ramifications of industrial agriculture make it not only unhealthy by every measure, but also unsustainable has become a popular thought. Promoting these practices and ideas doesn’t elicit smirks and rolled eyes. One finds no resistance among consumers to locally grown food apart from the problem of price. Local, organic agriculture is an idea whose time has come.  Of  the major systems that support our unsustainable lifestyle, food production is one of the easiest to replace by common people in their own communities. It’s much harder to change the transportation system!