Bryan Griffith

With this experimental series, I explore the grey areas between photography and painting, positive and negative space, object and ground. Each piece is a precarious attempt to capture the ephemeral essence of fire. I burn petroleum, “the most definitive and contentious commodity of our culture” in an open flame and accumulate the carbon from smoke directly onto a wooden panel coated with beeswax. While my method is novel, artists have used these primal materials for thousands of years. This work grew out of a grant to develop work for a traveling exhibition about wildfire called “Fires of Change”, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. After spending many hours with scientists in burned landscapes, I developed an appreciation for the power, beauty, and necessity of fire. By trying to exclude fire and death from the forest for the last 100 years, we have inadvertently severed the cycle of life. Now wildfire is coming back with a vengeance, like a river breeching a dam. Throughout this work I explore the idea of natural cycles, of dynamic systems seeking equilibrium. I juxtapose soft organic lines with geometrical forms that convey our desire to control capricious natural processes often with unintended consequences.