My current series of paintings and photographs, Embers of Consequence focuses on the current and future impacts of wildfires. As a kid I remember sleeping next to my stepmom and dad, hoping their pagers will not go off. I rarely got my wish. As firefighters and EMTs their job called them to duty. I feared for them, but not of fire as I thought "That won't happen to us. We fight fires, we are not victims to them." I was wrong. In 2015, when I was a teen, our entire property burned to the ground. The Butte Fire distorted 70,000 acres and hundreds of other homes. That stress, fear, loss, and long-term trauma is something that I always thought I'd be alone in feeling. However, recent wildfires suggest otherwise. A once-in-a-lifetime traumatic experience has become a yearly event in Northern Nevada. There are more fires and more smoke. More and more people are experiencing the loss my family and I felt.
In this series, I want to shine a light on the pain that so many of us have experienced, and the more people in the future who will join us. It is an inevitable future if we don't make drastic changes in society, and I want people to be scared enough to see that.
With my dramatic paintings and photographs, I hope to capture the emotions that engulf us just like the wildfires. I hope they'll make people uncomfortable, sad, and scared, or at least intrigued enough to care. Whether the art is depicting the past, present, or future, this is an important topic that is going to affect us all.
As a painter and photographer, I aim to make people think and feel strongly about wildfire in the hopes that we collectively can start taking action in combating climate change.