4/28 February Fires, 9× 12 inches, oil on panel. 2025.
Hello!
It has been a few months since I last posted on here. I am now living in North Carolina and feeling fully adjusted after the big move from Japan.
Over the winter break I visited my family in Southern California. That is where I was born and raised and it had been 2 years since I last visited.
While I was there, I reconnected to the landscape I grew up around which inspires my wildfire artwork. I gathered photos and videos of locations to use for future paintings. It was clear to see how dry the land was. I thought I might see wildfires while I was there, knowing it is a dangerously dry time of year.
Less than a week after we left to come back to North Carolina, the Eaton and Palisades fires broke out and leveled entire lives and communities. Seeing the photos and videos of the fires throughout January put a damper on wanting to paint wildfires. My heart hurts for everyone affected from the many homes and lives lost. And for the damage these fires have created in the local air, water and land that affects more than we currently understand.
Before the fires occurred I was planning to create a series of wildfire paintings in February to mark 10 years since the 28 Birthday Paintings series. But it was not inspiring when I knew those fires destroyed so much.
After I had some time to process the fires, I realized I still felt pulled to paint these wildfire landscape scenes. I felt that minimally sharing on social media and my website was the appropriate thing to do in this situation until more time passed. It also allowed my focus to stay in the creative process rather than sharing and feedback.
These wildfire paintings are valuable to understanding nature, reality, and change. They add to the dialogue about forest management, climate change, and development in fire prone regions to name a few. These paintings portray part of the story of the Western landscape. While stunning and beautiful at times, the Western landscape is also rugged, dangerous, and powerful.
28 Birthday Paintings, 2015. Acrylic on primed paper. BLOG POST HERE.
The Past + Present —
10 years ago in February of 2015, I decided to paint 28 wildfire landscapes for my 28th birthday. The pieces averaged 5x7 inches on primed paper with acrylic paint.
I was pregnant with my oldest son at the time and I wanted to create as much as I could before his birth. It was a tiring day, starting before 6 am and finishing at 11 pm. However, it felt good to create a body of work in a short time.
Fast forward to January of this year when I realized it has been 10 years since that series. I wanted to do something like that again to get back into painting wildfire landscapes. It has been 3 years since I last painted and finished a wildfire artwork.
I knew I needed a little “bootcamp” to find my rhythm and approach to wildfire landscape paintings. I also wanted to let this be a record of my development and focus of wildfires. I thought of it as a gift to my past, present, and future self.
5×7 inches, oil on primed paper. 6 of these were painted just before the February Fires project started. 8 were painted during February as studies to pieces I was working on.
Since life is busy with a young family, I came up with making 28 paintings during the 28 days of February. I decided to make them 9x12 inches on panel with oil paints. I wanted more space to explore light, color and composition.
The two weeks before February I started choosing and altering the images I wanted to use, then created composition and value sketches. The last week of January I warmed up with putting color on 6 value sketches to give me some confidence going into that first week.
The Project—
The first week of February was a wild one. I had a medical appointment every day for some routine labs and scans. I definitely was playing a bit of catch up that first weekend.
For the most part I was able to complete a painting in a day to stay on schedule and keep from over working pieces. I averaged about four hours on each piece, logging in more than 120 hours of painting for the month of February.
The hardest part about all of this was balancing family life.
My youngest (4) had lots of time drawing next to me while I painted when he was not at school. My older two (6+9) also spent time on the weekends drawing next to me at the kitchen table. Those were some special moments I hope I remember for a long time.
It was a mental struggle at the halfway mark. I was tired, overwhelmed, and had some pieces that required more focus and details. I knew they would look good if I could buckle down and do them. It was rewarding to see the final results of the more detailed pieces.
In the last week, I had to change up some of the reference photos because I was not feeling excited about them when it was time to make them. That took extra time to figure out, but I am glad I listened to my gut. I wanted each piece I made to be one I was excited to paint and finish. That was a key to staying motivated through the project.
The last few days flew by. It was hard to focus at the end because I was excited to be done and family was coming into town February 28.
I enjoyed painting more scenes with the viewpoint being closer to the flames. I loved studying the light and warmth of the flames and the colors it creates in the trees and foliage around it. It was fun being bolder in my color palette too. This series is vibrant and eye catching.
So here they are in all their drama and beauty.
I have not made full plans to release this collection for sale yet as I only decided a month before making them that I was doing it. I plan to enter a few into juried shows and apply for local exhibitions. I need to digitize and varnish them as well. If you have one you have your heart set on let me know and we can figure something out.
Until next time!
Artfully,
