Smoky Summers

Our experience of summer has changed and slowly our conception of it as well. Wildfires, a new summer reality, and the smoke that envelops the landscape is inescapable. In times where fire, flood, and other climate events make our relationship to nature impossible to ignore, a spirit of flexibility, gentleness, hope,  generosity and cooperation become even more important as we collectively grieve and seek out alternative relationships with land and water.

The 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive in British Columbia’s recorded history. Tens of thousands of people were forced to evacuate. Hundreds of homes and structures were lost or damaged and the impacts to cultural values, ecology, infrastructure and local economies were devastating. Indirect economic impacts to agriculture and tourism combined with unquantifiable impacts to people’s health and wellbeing must also be taken into account. For 28 days in 2023, B.C. was under a provincial state of emergency.

The imagery and reference material come from all over BC and reflect many communities’ reality as they experience living, working and playing here. These paintings document our smoky summers, the beauty, tranquillity and stillness that the blanket of smoke lends the landscape alongside paintings of more active burning and subsequent devastation to the landscape.