“ There is nothing permanent except change.”
I began painting fire in the early 2000s. Back then, for me it symbolized a feeling of hell, or guilt, but fire has many symbolic meanings–perhaps more than any other psychological symbol. As a Chicagoan, the memory of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 looms large in our collective imagination, and so in 2019, I revisited the theme. As I began painting burning houses, before long, Notre Dame was in flames, then the California wildfires raged, the Covid 19 pandemic hit, and then the civic unrest of the George Floyd protests exploded in the streets. The whole world seemed to be on fire, both literally and metaphorically, and so I plunged in. Since then, this feeling of everything burning, or in a state of violent upheaval, has only increased. There is a tangible feeling in the public sphere that a cultural epoch may be ending. This is all to say that there are many ways to interpret these paintings, some of them negative, and some positive. The house, in Jungian dream analysis is regarded as a symbol of the self, therefore a burning house might also be regarded as an image of positive self-transformation. Every ending is a new beginning. But whether viewed through a positive or negative lens, or a bit of both, these paintings are about the inevitability of change.
I’ve spoken a lot about interpretations, but ultimately, what I’m really interested in is capturing a powerful, provocative image that will move the viewer. I want my images to burn into the viewer’s memory. Aesthetics are paramount. I paint in a way that creates a sense of order and stillness, and I think and hope that this approach creates an aesthetic distance which enables the viewer to look at something that might otherwise be too horrible, or too ordinary to look at, and to find beauty in it. A historical example of this kind of freezing of a violent moment is the Hellenistic sculpture, Laocoön, in which giant serpents attack the Trojan priest and his sons. The sense of stillness in the midst of such chaos somehow lifts the image to a mythic, symbolic level, and this is an approach to image making that interests me greatly. I don’t always paint fire, but everything I paint incorporates the notion of change, or transience. Whether it is a painting of snow on a branch that reminds the viewer of the beauty of fleeting moments, or a large canvas with a burning neighborhood, which reminds us of the impermanence of even civilizations, I suppose the feeling I ultimately wish to convey is life affirming. We live in a world of impermanence, and the acceptance of this fact, I believe, leads to a deeper appreciation of the world, and of life itself.
