Pick-up Sticks

Pick-up Sticks is a watercolor and pyrography painting by Suze Woolf

Painting Details
Watercolor and pyrography on 140 lb Arches watercolor paper
30 x 44 diptych
 
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). This scene is derived from the Barriere Burn, north of Kamloops, BC. The snow had melted off the grassy hillside, especially since there was no foliage to shade it, but not off the shaded blue valley with its rushing stream. To paraphrase another Canadian, the process is the message. 

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.