Imperiled Trees

In 1990 I moved from an urban environment on the East Coast to a rural island in the Pacific Northwest to make landscape paintings. I was drawn to the lush evergreens, ferns, mists, and rain. Summer temperatures were reliably cool and comfortable. I sought open waters, unusual land forms, mountains and pastures, beaches, and forests for my painting subjects. 

Now, where there once were lush forests, there are dead and dying trees owing to drought stress and record-breaking heat waves. Vast areas of habitat all over the world are being destroyed by clear-cutting and wildfires. Late Summer and early Fall used to be times of clear blue skies and moderate temperature. Now smoke from nearby wildfires regularly make the air unbreathable and obscure the places I treasure and the landscapes I used to paint. Life on Earth is in peril because planetary health is linked to forests. With this in my awareness, I've been working on conceiving a series of paintings of trees, forests, forest fires, and the devastating aftermath of wildfires. It's a difficult subject and technically challenging for me as a painter, requiring many preparatory studies.