Plume

SOLD

30” x 40”

Oil, oil pastel, acrylic, and gouache on panel

A pristinely manicured park stands boldly in the foreground of “Plume” while the smoke of a newly sparked wildfire leers menacingly in the distance. Much like a dying person sees her life flash before her eyes in the moments before death, I have always found the presence of a wildfire plume to be a powerful apparatus in the exercise of appreciating what lies before you - the sudden threat of its existence making the precious beauty evermore acute. What was assumed is at once a miracle as its very being is no longer guaranteed. I remember having that thought as I watched the massive plume above my hometown lurch across the sky during the 2018 Camp Fire. Memories that had been frozen for decades in childhood nostalgia suddenly thawed that day, rushing brightly into my mind’s eye only to be left there to cure as impressions forever as the physical basis for them burned away.