Madelyn Godfroy’s “Live Updates” - 2025 Winner

Madelyn Godfroy’s “Live Updates” 
Painting: Acrylic paint 
Hopkinton, MA 

Sometimes I'll see reporters on the news describing a hurricane while apparently standing in the middle of it. I've always thought that these reporters had to be pretty fearless -- often, in the background, trees sway violently and waves crash against seawalls. This scene is so much more tame when watching it from the comfort of my home, hundreds of miles from where it's being recorded. It's easy to distance myself from the event and move on to something else. I think many people approach climate change in this way: because it isn't affecting me immediately, it feels less important than it is. To an individual, the issue tends to slip through the cracks in the shadow of more immediate problems. The reporter's job is to put the hurricane in sight. To show people how fast climate change can have real, immediate effects. In many cases, just a few hundred miles is the difference between being someone who has lost their home in a climate-related disaster and someone who has not. 2 of 2 In this painting, I wanted to imagine what it would be like to be that reporter. Like hurricanes, climate change is bigger than any one individual. It's bigger than any one community, and any one country. The weight of communicating something so large and so consequential falls on this reporter and her tripod, small against her surroundings. But she provides the window for the wider world to look through. She brings a seemingly faraway problem back to the forefront of conversation of those lucky enough to not be involved so that national and global conversation may be possible. So that action can begin.