Beauty from Ashes — paintings created in response to the 2017 California wildfires
Making Beauty From Ashes, a story about creating something beautiful from loss.
These paintings were created with acrylics and the ashes of my paintings, from my studio, which was burned in the Tubbs wildfire in October 2017. They are all 16" x 20" in size, and painted on gallery-wrapped canvas.
I took photographs of the melted corrugated metal roof of the barn in which I had my studio, and saw abstract landscapes in the photographs. They inspired the composition of this series of abstract landscape paintings. They are not paintings of any particular place — rather, they are places of the heart. I see beauty rising from these ashes.
I took photographs of the melted corrugated metal roof of the barn in which I had my studio, and saw abstract landscapes in the photographs. They inspired the composition of this series of abstract landscape paintings. They are not paintings of any particular place — rather, they are places of the heart. I see beauty rising from these ashes.
These smaller paintings (they are 6"x8" in size) incorporate collaged photographs of the melted metal of the barn roof into the acrylic painting. I found the shapes of landscapes in them. Some of them remind me of spring flowers — perhaps mustard or California poppies — emerging from the ashes, as the land heals. They speak to me of beauty rising from the ashes of what was, creating new possibilities and new perceptions.
