Firestorm
The rustling of dry leaves and the smell of smoke blown by a warm East wind awakened me in the early morning hours of October 9, 2017. Twelve miles away the Tubbs fire had jumped the freeway and was incinerating home after home as thousands of residents fled for their lives. The flames began moving in our direction. Frantically my wife and I raced to evacuate my 85-year-old mother and elderly aunt, both of whom were handicapped and could not drive.
Along with our house filled with personal belongings and family memorabilia was my art studio containing 50 years of my artwork. A friend helped me toss the canvases up into the back of a pick-up truck. We dumped them off in the parking lot of a nearby industrial park, then drove back to the house, leaving the paintings to fate. Fortunately, the fire burned in the opposite direction and our community was spared.
Art Bunker
I live in a danger zone- two miles out on a country road surrounded by trees and dry, grassy hillsides. California wildfire season is now year-round. Our house has been “hardened,” and our cars are always packed with emergency go-bags. Furniture, clothing, and even a house can be replaced, but not my paintings. I now keep them in a storage facility with 6-inch concrete walls and steel doors. Only the few paintings which are currently being worked on remain in the studio.
Annual Ordeals
The next year in 2018, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history struck. We watched the tragedy on the news. 240 square miles were burned, 18,000 buildings were destroyed and 85 people lost their lives. Then in 2019 a wall of fire and smoke arose only a couple of miles from our home. We fled in terror as the conflagration approached. The Kinkade fire burned to within 900 feet of our house. The only thing that stopped it was a Boeing 747 tanker jet dropping thousands of gallons of fire retardant to dowse the flames. We evacuated and went to stay with friends in a nearby city. In 2020, the Walbridge fire started during a lightning storm a few miles to our west. The flames were fanned by onshore ocean breezes in the direction of our home. We evacuated until it was safe to return.
Aftermath
Walking through the fire-ravaged woodlands of the 3,000-acre Pepperwood Nature Preserve, where only the year prior, as Pepperwood’s Artist in Residence I had wandered through a green forest, I felt like I’d descended into the Underworld, Hades, the realm of the dead. It was a place utterly without color, and completely devoid of life. Where familiar trees once stood were blackened stumps or gaping holes out from which upon the ground extended dark shadows surrounded by auras of gray ash. The green leaves, deer, coyotes, bears and birds were all gone. At my feet I saw a dead mole that had perished when it came to the surface to breathe. Its tiny body was like those of the dead in the ruins of ancient Pompeii, incinerated by a cloud of ash from Mount Vesuvius.
Witness
I was exploring alone on a frigid late winter afternoon, taking photographs for A World That Has Burned, when I saw the trunk of an enormous fallen bay laurel tree toppled on the floor of the empty forest. It had been totally incinerated and charred by fire, and its roots torn up from the earth. A sense of catastrophe and mortality filled me with trepidation as I approached the fallen giant. I imagined its last moments of exhaustion and pain as it was wrenched from the earth and blown to the ground in a rain of glowing embers. Then, as I stood in the cold silence, snowflakes began to fall and gather at the base of the tree, bringing sanctification to the dead.
Vision
The movement of the falling snow coming to rest on the blackened tree trunk brought the scene before me to life and I sensed a presence beyond myself. I felt the spirit of the tree, the passing of its life force, the sadness of Mother Earth in this place of mourning. In my mind’s eye I saw a vision of a very old woman with long white hair lying in the ashes on the ground, her supine form mirroring that of the massive tree looming over her. She lay in a wounded state between black and white, fire and ice, life and death. Who was that old, but very beautiful, woman? What wisdom did she hold, what message for me and humanity?
Artemis
In ancient Greek mythology, the virgin goddess Artemis represented the spirit of all living things. She was the fierce protector of wild untouched nature, mountains, forests, trees, and every animal. Deer were her companions, although she hunted them. Her symbol was the crescent moon that appeared at twilight. She was also the defender of young maidens, pregnant women, and children- those who brought new life into the world. Armed with a bow and silver-tipped arrows she punished hunters who disrespected her or casually killed the creatures of her woodland domain. Her presence maintained a sacred balance in the world. Throughout ancient Greece, Artemis was one of the most commonly worshipped goddesses and her temples were numerous.
Painting a Goddess
Three different women modeled for me as Artemis. The first was an elderly woman whose beautiful long white hair cascaded down her back. Unfortunately, she was so old, frail and inflexible that lying down in the pose was impossible. So, I painted a small portrait study of her sitting upright in a chair. My second model was a professional artist’s model. Her hair was the color of a raven’s wing and her body as beautiful as that of any goddess. The pose she took with the bow and arrow, wearing a sheer white tunic, was perfect. My third model was an artist friend with long gray hair. Together we visited the fire blackened tree in the forest and she lay on the ground beneath it. She wore an heirloom gold bracelet that day that introduced a new meaning to the story.
World on Fire
The hottest average daily global temperature in 100,000 years was recorded this summer, just as I put the finishing touches on my oil painting Artemis in Ashes. The planet is warming. The entire Mediterranean world (Greece; Italy; France; Spain; Portugal; Yugoslavia), where Artemis was once worshiped, has been hit with record droughts and wildfires. My painting, in addition to being an expression of my own personal terror and loss, is a symbol of a world in crisis; an unsustainable world; a world out of balance. This is the most important issue of our times because excessive temperatures can destroy entire ecosystems and kill millions of people and animals from heat exhaustion and starvation.
Mythologies in Conflict
The myth of Artemis is one that teaches conservation, care for living creatures, and the danger of disrespecting the laws of nature. In opposition to it is a popular modern myth. It is the myth that unregulated, free-market capitalism is the solution to all of mankind’s problems. It is a tale that leads its worshippers to believe that greedy corporations and self-indulgent consumers will maintain the earth’s ecosystems in good health simply out of self- interest. This false assumption, tragically, has justified the increased burning of fossil fuels, resulting in global warming, and the punishing wildfires that now rage across the planet.
Phoenix
The iconography of my Artemis in Ashes evolved over many months. As the painting took shape upon the canvas, I did research and delved deep into the roots of its mythology. My depiction of the goddess, like the painting’s composition and title, departs from the traditional. I’ve reinterpreted the story and added my own idiosyncratic details. At the very center is one which might easily be overlooked although it contains the key to understanding this painting and knowing what I think and feel about the future. Look carefully at Artemis’ golden bracelet; engraved upon its curve is a picture from of another ancient myth. A bird is rising from the flames.
Native Wisdom
We are not doomed. Fire can also be a source of both purification and renewal. Ash is one of the richest natural fertilizers for growing plants. Humans can learn to understand and work with fire intelligently. This is the tradition of “cultural burning” practiced by native Californians for thousands of years. It is a practice now being brought back to life to lessen the buildup of vast quantities of dry brush that fuel extreme wildfires. This “low and slow” strategy promotes annual controlled burns that gently maintain the resilience of the ecosystem. Western civilization may have lost sight of the deeper meaning of the Artemis myth, but its lesson is now being retold by indigenous people whose experiential knowledge has been ignored for centuries. In a new and unexpected way, we are returning to the wisdom of our elders.