I started this painting at the beginning of August. I discovered an old black and white photo of an oil field fire in Richmond CA in 1963. It was nicely composed and resonated with the general mood of 2020.
As I was painting this, exploring different colors and tonalities for the earth and the smoke, a series of massive fires swept through California. My immediate area was not threatened but the air quality was pretty toxic for many days from all the smoke. I felt that in some obscure way I summoned the fires from my painting. Maybe for the next work, I’ll paint a picture of the current Commander and Chief getting devoured by a bear.
Anyway, I was sort of stumped to come up with a title for this – Richmond, 1963 seemed a bit too dry for these days – so I just punted and went with Metaphor.