"After the Fire"
22" x  28"
Plein Air Oil on Canvas
copyright by Artist,  Brenda Hofreiter

This painting was completed on location at Lake Woodruff Wildlife Refuge near Deland, FL.  This is a managed wildlife area, and periodically controlled burns are instituted to remove invasive species.  While I was painting there, they started a burn.

This is what the area looked like just 2 weeks after the fire.  It astonished me how quickly the grasses recovered and grew in to cover the scorched and blackened earth.  From week to week you could see life return triumphant.   From the utter devastation of the fire, a strange beauty began to emerge.  The leaves of the burned vegetation turned into the jewel like colors of fall.  The bright leaves of red, orange and gold amidst the newly emerging greens and stark blackness were surprisingly beautiful and I hurried to record their fleeting beauty. 

While I painted this, it became a metaphor to me about the cycle of life and death and life victorious again.  I was reminded of the strange and wonderful beauty in the cycle of Life that encompasses both the devastation of death, and the hopefulness of new and triumphant life and of the haunting beauty that lives between two breaths.