To put it simply, my work is about rebirth through destruction. Imagery of wildfire feels very pertinent in a time with news of massive fires around the world and vogue terms like “dumpster fire year” and “Phoenixing.” With these two particular paintings, “You & Me Were All Valleys & Peaks” and “Match Made In Heaven” I wanted to create a parable about relationships, specifically romantic, that go out in a blaze and wreak devastation in our lives the way a wildfire does to an ecosystem. I think many, if not most, have been there – those relationships that shake your very beliefs but, in the end, teach us the lessons we didn’t know we needed to learn. Anyway, I wrote these lyrics last Summer Solstice to a song that will never be written. I imagine something earth-shaking and melodramatic like Florence + The Machine.

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Another solstice spent hiding away

The days are long and I’m feeling extra restless

How long in life are we cleaning up yesterday’s messes?

And it’s been 3 years since you burned

Through my life like a wildfire

I thought we were afloat on a cosmic sea

But that was just your spell, Your flames

Licking the leaves right off the limbs of my trees

And I dropped to my knees

Dug my nails into the dirt and I screamed

I demanded answers, black & white

But gray, scorched earth through

The smoke was all I could see

Ever since, I’ve lost the magic

In which I used to believe…

The magic in which I believed

And it’s been 3 years since you burned

Through my life like a wildfire

I thought we were afloat on a cosmic sea

But that was just your spell, Your flames

Licking the leaves right off the limbs of my trees

When the ashes and the embers settled

To the ground, the sun it was red,

I emerged in a clearing alone and for

Miles in each direction I could see

And I realized the fires you set to my life,

Had finally set me free…

Finally I was free

And the path to the magic I seek

Is a road that exists only in me…

Yes, the answers are in me.