Falling Stars Made Of Ashes
Kyle Scheurmann's oil paintings are the documentations of our threatened landscapes that have undergone human-induced trauma. The artist's work is painted on linen, canvas or jute, and characterized by his thoughtful palette and painterly approach; utilizing the subtle nuances of indigo, mauve and violet to great effect. Pieces are presented unframed, and ready to hang.
About Falling Stars Made of Ashes, the artist states:
Lightning is exceptionally rare in the mountains on the west coast and, despite living there for several years, I don’t remember witnessing anything close to an electrical storm - certainly not like the ones I grew up with on the prairies.
Fire was the lens through which I saw the forest this year. I’d spent a whole month on Vancouver Island chasing and being chased by fire. So when I phoned home to northwest Ontario to let my dad know I was on the way back, my heart sank when he told me about the heavy smoke filling the yard around my studio.
On June 27th, I woke up early to get the first ferry over to the mainland, then started heading east with hopes of making it to Golden before nightfall.
I was somewhere between Salmon Arm and Revelstoke when I first heard it:
Crash, Crush, Groan, Rumble.
Winding through the tallest peaks of the mountains, switchbacks and single lanes:
Bang, Crack, Snap, Boom.
It was just outside of Malakwa that I finally pulled over the truck on the side of the road. Alone in the dark, I cried as I watched lightning sear open the sky. Ash fell instead of rain.
The next morning while driving through Lake Louise, I heard a report on the local radio: “All water bombers grounded due to electrical storms.”
I hadn’t seen a bird since Merritt.
——
Friday, July 19th, 2024 was a big day. I knew it was the day that representatives for Global Affairs Canada in Ottawa were viewing my painting “Thunder” in person to confirm they’d like to go ahead with purchasing the painting and I kept thinking about what the conversation they were having sounded like.
It was also another day that I woke up to thick smoke under a red hazy sky around my studio.
I had a call at noon with Sarah from the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation about how the Art Auction for Old Growth is coming together. Before we got into any of
the auction details, Sarah shared with me about the terrifying night she’d just had.
From the porch of her home just south of the place I painted in “Thunder,” she could see forest fires popping up across the lake as a rainless electrical storm hammered the mountainside. She told me that this summer, there was increased use of waterbomber helicopters because of how nimble they are compared to airplanes. But the helicopters had also been grounded due to the electrical storm.
I didn’t tell her that in that exact same moment, my heart was in Ottawa, crying for help for people just like Sarah, in front of a government audience.
Later that afternoon, I started burning a small shard of ancient cedar into a bowl, crushing and then filtering the soot into fine black powder for mixing into my next painting.
It was in this moment, at 4:07pm, that I coincidentally got an unsolicited email from a grad student at Carlton University - also in Ottawa. She’s writing a thesis for a “Climate Change” masters, titled “After the Forest Burns: Material Stories of Climate Change.”
She wanted to talk about why I keep mixing ashes into my paint…
The truth is that I never really thought too much about the ash when I first started using it, it was just the most obvious thing: to make a painting with the very material that the painting is about. To make a painting that is, in every way possible, a material and visual reflection of our reality.
It's going to take me a while to get used to the fact that a painting I made in order to scream “HELP!” is now going to silently do so on behalf of this country, hanging on some far-away wall for diplomat eyes.
That night, I dreamed I was driving through Malakwa again, lightning still searing open the sky. But as often happens in dreams, one little detail had changed. Instead of ash falling where there should be rain, I woke up seeing stars.
Falling stars made of ashes. - Kyle Scheurmann
