18" x 24" Mixed media: encaustic wax, acrylic and metallic pigment on premiere wood panel, with maple floating frame .
The Fire destroys everything a fashion image is supposed to deliver. There is no face, no fabric, no seam, no shoe, nothing a buyer could order. What remains is the silhouette, and the artist's wager is that the silhouette was always the only part that mattered.
This is not a stylistic conceit but an accurate reading of the discipline. Fashion's fundamental unit has never been the garment; it is the line, the silouhette a body cuts against light, the thing a season is remembered by long after its colors and closures are forgotten. The trade has known this for as long as it has drawn: the working sketch reduces the human to an elongated shadow so that the shape can be judged before the cloth exists. Fire simply refuses to complete the drawing. It stops at the stage where the idea is still pure and shows us the croquis as finished painting.
The work carries: Vitality · Courage · Transformation · Protection · Ascension.
