One of the things that I find so startling about the terrible wildfires in Los Angeles a couple years ago is how fast the flames spread. The flames had a kind of demonic quality. They moved faster than cars in many instances, a friend of mine who lived in Beechwood Canyon had a terrifying experience. Since I also had lived in Beachwood Canyon and it's one of my favorite parts of Los Angeles. I could really relate to what happened to her from her apartment. She could see the smoke and the flames as they raced over the Hollywood Hills towards her. Her apartment is just yards from where my apartment was. I can't imagine what my reaction would've been. But perhaps more importantly think of all the people that lost their homes. Think of the poison that leached into the Earth as a result of these fires. So in contemplating this, and looking at all the pictures, what struck me the most was how everything that the fire hit was not just singed or burnt, but often completely obliterated. Whole neighborhood vaporized. One of the things that struck me is that you can look at the at the pictures, but it's hard to imagine the smell and the sheer heat of it all. I said about painting the emotions and feelings of this catastrophe. I didn't want to try to literally depict it. Instead, I thought about the colors and the textures that make the most impression on me. There was a kind of rust color that seem to permit the neighborhoods in Los Angeles that were destroyed that and ass sort of charcoal ash. In a lot of of these places had people trying to go back home while the fires were still nearby. Greek is a multi layered emotion and a multi layered experience. to create the sense of texture, I use cellophane bubble wrap, even crumpled up pieces of newsprint. I did more layers than I normally do and did not really want to show a lot of colors. There is something monochromatically intense about neighborhoods after fires. In this case often a ring of fire would be on the horizon around the crest of the mountain -- even when the fires were supposefly contained. Familiez looked at the utter destruction and tragedy of this disaster. One thought I could not get out of my head was the peculiar inevitabilty of this conflagration. Perhaps we all knew in our hearts that Los Angeles never has been a great ecosystem to support such a megalopolis. The city is a completely artificial synthetic, and fragile habitat. I used acrylic markers to paint little burnt yellow, ochre and squash colored circlez at the top pf the canvas. These haunted elipses signal the idea that the fire still continues to stalk the city.

Artwork Size & Ink Base:

61 x 122

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Daniel Aaron Schwartz

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