Last summer, as wildfires ravaged Northern Ontario, many on the eastern side of Canada experienced the visuals of wildfire for the first time. But the haze was all too familiar for Vancouver painter Liz Toohey-Wiese, who was attending an art residency on Toronto Island last year when smoke blanketed the city.
“Unfortunately, that new reality is just becoming so repetitive each summer,” she says. It’s why she thinks we’re seeing more wildfire art and why it’s having more impact. “It’s just something more and more people are dealing with.” “This exhibition, in Victoria, is interesting in that the show is spanning fire season. So the work will not change, but how the work feels may change very much by the end of summer,” said Toohey-Wiese.
“There’s this tendency to want to find solutions right away rather than sitting with and feeling our way through what’s happening,” Silverfox said. “I think art can create a space for us to really listen to each other and hear how everybody’s being affected differently.”with a sketch of a burnt forest drawn with charcoal gathered from local fire-prevention work. Attendees added to the canvas with markers, pastels, beads and other art supplies to represent a forest recovering from fire.
Scheurmann’s art was recently shown at Toronto gallery Bau-Xi. Many of the paintings in the show were inspired by his time protesting at Fairy Creek and other old-growth anti-logging blockades. But as his summers were repeatedly interrupted by fires – roadblocks, smoke-filled days and glowing horizons – wildfire has entered his art as well.