What the Fire Wrote

What the Fire Wrote is a Suze Woolf pyrographic drawing

Painting Details
Pyrography on coffee-stained hemp-bamboo paper mounted on BFK Rives printmaking paper, burned sticks, grommets and wire
16 x 50.5 exclusive of sticks
 
During my Banff Centre residency, I departed from my usual medium to experiment with using fire to draw burned forests (or at least a woodburning tool). To paraphrase another Canadian, the process is the message.
 
The open-ended leaf makes this one an Artist Book as well!

As the climate warms, forest fires are becoming more frequent and catastrophic in the western United States. My deep anxiety with the impacts of climate change on wilderness are emerging in this series. Burned-over areas of forest are riveting. Unfamiliar tree forms are newly exposed. Formerly hidden terrain features become visible. Normal greens, blues and browns are transformed. All the worst fires of the last fifty years have occured in the last five years.

Please contact me if you are interested in learning more about any of my images. All represent original paintings, not reproductions. I have many more paintings than are shown on this site. And, since I frequently work in series, there may be additional views of the subjects shown here.