Fire

Oil on panel
1997

This was the first painting of a series of four that feature a torso set on a red background. The other three pieces are “Air,” “Water” and “Earth.” I wanted to restrict the series to just a torso on red background but that would somehow reflect qualities of each element.

This piece is my favorite because it best conveys my sense that we are all simply momentary collectivizations of energy patterns into the appearance of something. It is almost as though the winds of the universe had blown up all these pieces and just for this moment they are a torso…a person. And in the blink of an eye all the parts will be blown back into the chaos of all.

Another way to describe it is that it seems to strike a delicate balance between a solid sculptural form and yet at the same time it could just be a fortunate collection of brush strokes that just happen to form a torso. A little more structure and it would just be a solid lump. A little less structure and it would just be a formless scattered mess. I’m not sure how I managed to strike that balance here. But just to see how this might work I did a copy of this piece and while it turned out to be a nice painting, it definitely does not have this extra magical quality.