Comments: Painting w/ Fire

It was Jon Friedman who first turned me onto Yves Klein sometime in the mid-70's when we lived in Bisbee.

I was floored, especially when I read about how he had used a flamethrower to torch paintings while members of the Paris fire dept stood by with hoses and axes (there are photos documenting this event).

But I never got just what Klein's process was, and so, as I was just beginning my journey into silversmithing and learning how to manipulate a propane tank, and Jon, who had become the director of the Cochise Fine Arts Gallery, had beneficently allowed me to come by and pick up "free" art supplies (left by the elderly ladies painting club that had disbanded when the hippies took over this once bastion of Bisbee's cultural heritage).

Thus, armed with passion and no doubt some mescal and weed, I began to experiment!

I wanted to work in oils at that time and knowing practically nothing about the medium of course (Jon and Peter Young called me a naive painter, which I have always understood was something they believed was to my advantage).

Eventually, after playing w/ smaller bits of canvas, I decided to lug this huge piece of plywood that sat abandoned in my neighbor Michael Foster's backyard into my studio, stretched/stapled canvas onto it, and painted away, choosing mostly "sunset" reds and oranges and whatever other related colors I had.

I also started pouring and splattering turpentine (I used it to clean brushes) onto areas of this long (10-12") canvas, and lighting it w/ the torch.

Rivers of Fire!!!

Sometimes I'd "direct" the flow, others I would allow it to meander.

And I also began to apply clomps of pigment in areas of the canvas (then later on other pieces), thickly applied, and then burn it.

That was totally intriguing as well; I played with breaking down the oil paint, and of course figuring out what effects worked and compensated for what didn't.

Thus, the two red landscape fire paintings came from that event (lasting over a few weeks).

But it was actually Peter Young, who wandered by one evening (during one of his turquoise specimen discovery tours on "B" Mountain, who came up with what proved to be the ultimate lesson!

This 12' "canvas had been sitting in my studio for days when Peter wandered by.

After a short rap in the kitchen, I led him into the studio to show him this latest "Frankenstein"; admittedly, like the good doctor, I too didn't fully understand my creation, and thought I needed to continue working on this "monster" to try and make it into a "whole statement", unify its somewhat dysfunctional disjointed parts.

Peter, always the brilliant teacher, suddenly grabbed a wooden frame sitting on the floor (maybe 8.5/11"???), and began "framing" sections of this thing he saw as individual "paintings"!

I was stoned, dumbfounded at what I saw; Peter, playing his Don Genero part, laughed like a child!

And so he showed me some 15 paintings or so instead of one, blowing me "idealistic" mind, as I had always assumed an artist paints his/her inspiration, works it into some holistic statement, and moves on. I mean, paintings weren't the cut-up prose and poetry of Burroughs and Gyson!

But they were, and are- anything goes...whatever works, right?

And so this is how my fire paintings were born and developed. I pretty much continued painting w/ fire for the rest of the years while living in Bisbee (till I split for eastcoast in Dec 1980 after Lennon's assassination and my divorce w/ Chris) and then later in the mid-late 80's when I moved back to Arizona and Tucson.