I’d watch the sugarcane fields, towering above my body, be set ablaze by a fire that expanded until it scorched the crop down to dust and ash. Black clouds billowed overhead while the reaffirming fragrance of gas and diesel signaled the arrival of a new season.

My work explores this cyclical “scorching” that is imperative to regeneration. Buried with charcoal and flooded with turpentine, my canvases capture the plumes of dust that are needed for a new and fertile figure–ground to emerge.