WEAR WHAT MATTERS — Our Story
by Jerry Sullivan

I didn't pick up a paintbrush until I was 70 years old.

We had just moved to Maui, and something about the light there — the way it fell on the tropical flowers, the way the ocean held color differently than anywhere I'd ever been — made me need to paint. I had no formal training, no plan. Just a brush and something I couldn't ignore.

What happened next still surprises me. My work found an audience almost immediately. I joined the Lahaina Arts Society and my husband and I sold paintings beneath the famous Banyan tree — one of the most beautiful places on earth to share art with strangers. Collectors from around the world found their way to my work. Two paintings found their home with a rock and roll legend I'm not sure I'm still convinced actually wanted them.

Then life changed, the way it does. My husband's health brought us back to Indiana, far from the tropics that had first called me to paint. The flowers were gone. So I turned to the animals — the big cats especially — creatures I had loved my entire life. I painted for pure pleasure, for the joy of capturing something wild and alive on canvas.

But the more I painted, the more I learned. And the more I learned, the harder it became to stay quiet.

The polar bear stopped me cold. When I discovered that it may already be too late to save them — that an animal of such power and grace could be lost within our lifetimes, largely because of us — something shifted. I couldn't just paint for pleasure anymore. I needed people to see what we stand to lose.

Your children may never see these animals outside of a photograph. The polar bear on melting ice. The mountain gorilla in a shrinking forest. The snow leopard, the tiger, the elephant. We are the generation that will decide whether they survive.

These are inhabitants of the earth. They belong here as much as we do.

Wear What Matters began as a painting. Then another. Then a question — what if the art could do more than hang on a wall? Every piece of clothing, every print, every object we make carries that question with it. A portion of every purchase goes directly to wildlife conservation through the World Wildlife Fund, because awareness without action isn't enough.

I am 83 years old. I paint every day. And I am not done fighting for them.

— Jerry