Carle Hessay Red Flame

Carle Hessay: Red Flame

Wildfires burned with greater intensity and frequency than ever before on the West Coast of Canada in the summer of 2021. As if predictive of such increasing environmental disasters, many of Carle Hessay's paintings show forests and man-made structures going up in flames. Carle was an avid prospector who travelled to the remote interior regions of British Columbia. He would have frequently come across the charred remains of fires in his trips to gather images for his paintings. Instead of finding restoration in nature as was usually the case, such images appear to have gained apocalyptic and symbolic proportions for him. A survivor of many tragedies, including wars, he saw that the magnitude of such events recalled historical man-made and existential disasters and presaged future destruction. As his former partner, Sheila Lawrence, observed, his fire paintings often reflect his anger at the greed of large corporations who go into forests and jungles to burn large swaths of vegetation for their own industrial projects, irrespective of the native inhabitants and nature. Now we see this practice as precipitating climate change as well.

This painting shows charred trees being consumed by bright red avaricious flames. The effect is enhanced by the buckling, glossy surface of the painted canvas itself. In the middle of the immediate foreground there appear to be the remains of a fence, indicated by some cross hatching, simulating the crosses formed by some of the falling trees. Compositionally, a heaped, flame-like shape dominates the burning mass as it peaks against the smoky grey background from which the fire seems to has moved forward toward the viewer.

(Dimensions: 749 x 600 mm, 30 x 24 inches; on canvas board)