The Book of Fire

The Book of Fire is a pyrographic drawing by Suze Woolf

Painting Details
Pyrography on rice paper, mounted on BFK Rives printmaking paper, burned sticks
13.5 x 50, 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 soldering iron). To paraphrase another Canadian, the process is the message.  One of the more delicate and abstract pieces of artwork I've done in years. It was a great reminder of how little information - line length, placement, occlusion -- it takes for your brain to construct a topography.

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.