Disaster paintings

Last week I was sort of whining in an email to an old friend who is also a VERY good painter about the ongoing smoke from the various fires around us as well as feeling a bit "stuck" as to what to paint next.  Her simple reply was: "paint the smoke".  Good advice and so I did.  After "The Wildfire" was finished I thought about the seemingly endless reports of floods and tornados this spring and early summer so decided to paint those as well. I chose to paint these in a small format - 11"x14" ovals.  I like the kind of vintage look they offer and I also painted them in a monochromatic sepia tone.  I don't want to simply document these events - that's for the documentary photographers.  Rather, I wanted to make these very difficult occurrences appear beautiful and dreamlike for a just a moment.

By the way, please visit my good friend Ricki Klages' website and enjoy her paintings: http://rickiklages.com/home.html.

The Wildfire, The Flood and The Tornado