CONTROLLED BURNS
Drawing upon a potent childhood memory of encountering a charred post-burn landscape, the Controlled Burn series depicts realistic forest landscapes in the process of receiving prescribed fire. Controlled burning—also called prescribed fire or “good fire”—is an indigenous practice in which fire is used to maintain the health of a forest, namely by reducing the risk of wildfires, eliminating invasive plant species, and returning nutrients to the soil.
At the surface level, this series calls attention to the practice of controlled burning as Indigenous technology that would have largely prevented the devastating wildfires we’ve seen in recent history, emphasizing the need to center Indigenous peoples and knowledge in all land stewardship efforts. More broadly, I am interested in the ways in which these slowly and meticulously painted landscapes might also become points of meditation to consider not only the ecological cost of suppressing indigenous earth-based wisdom, but the psychospiritual cost as well.
The processes of colonialism and Western scientific progress desacralized the world, removing spirit from matter, severing mind from body and ultimately resulted in a collective soul loss. The implications of such a traumatic loss are vast. This series is an offering toward this wound.
Through painting medicinal fire, I seek to make quiet images that provide some psychic space to help us see the contours of and “stay with the trouble,” ecological and otherwise.