Something happened when you saw this. What was it?
Ephemeral Atmosphere · 2022
Inferno
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
The whole fire — not the flame but the inferno, atmosphere at its most total and most consuming.
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?
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 10 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 10 ft or more
- Light
- Natural light transforms this work — morning and evening light read differently
- Daylight
- Graphite and shadowed umber carry this fire, and they hold their color, but strong direct sun can flatten such deep darks. Indirect daylight keeps the burnt sienna smoldering inside them.
Lives best in
Living room 5/5
Inferno earns a living room wall by doing what the best art in a shared space should: it holds the room without bullying it, and the graphite-to-burnt-sienna burn invites exactly the slow, revisited looking that happens when people live with a painting across seasons.
Bedroom 4/5
The score is high because the mood, despite the title, is low and inward, and the soft lilac and tarnished silver threading through the char keep the palette from being punishing at the hour when a sleeper needs the room to settle.
Details
- Size
- 9 × 6 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Year
- 2022
- Collection
- Ephemeral Atmosphere
- Palette
- Graphite Black · Shadowed Umber · Brown · Burnt Sienna · Olive Green · Muted White · Tarnished Silver · Soft Lilac · Midnight Blue
- Weight
- About 65 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 6–10 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Sprig
- Texture2
- Form2
- Colour range5
- Palette1
- Contrast4.4
- Abstraction Quotient3.5
