Inferno
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 6ft x 9ft
Creation Date: 2022
Collection: Ephemeral Atmosphere
Inferno (2022) is a painting that burns slowly — not with violence, but with elemental transformation. At 76 x 112 inches, it’s one of the largest works in the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, and perhaps the most visceral. The canvas smolders with emotion, temperature, and myth.
Built in layers of deep crimson, ash gray, burnt umber, and bright gold, Inferno doesn’t explode. It simmers. It glows from within. There are no flames, but the heat is felt — through thick brushwork, charred textures, and smoke-like veils of color that swirl like breath in firelight.
The title nods to Dante, of course — but this isn’t a narrative hell. It’s a personal one. A psychological and emotional terrain where destruction becomes a necessary passage. You don’t witness the inferno from a distance. You walk through it.
In energy and depth, this piece resonates with Anselm Kiefer, especially in its use of color and surface to evoke cycles of ruin and rebirth. Like Kiefer, I believe that fire can be both an end and a beginning.
Inferno is a painting of reckoning. It doesn’t offer answers, but it does offer clarity — the kind that comes after everything has burned away and only truth remains.
As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this work holds heat and light in equal measure. It asks: What are you ready to release? And what new self rises from the ashes?
