Beneath a sky smeared with the deep purples and reds of dusk, the earth unabashedly reveals its fiery heart. The molten lava flows like a network of glowing veins, carving pathways through the charred and blackened terrain. The land is alight with the dance of destruction and creation; a primordial force undaunted by the encroaching cloak of twilight. Jagged silhouettes of the hardened rock formations stand in stark contrast against the incandescent liquid, fragments of daylight captured in the heat of the lava's embrace.
Reflections in the small rivulets of cooled, but still warm vastness, flirt with the idea of a bleak inferno, a deceptive stillness hovering above the chaos. The raw power of nature's furnace is both terrifying and beautiful, an artist painting the beginnings of new worlds with strokes of flame and ash.
What primal event birthed this fiery spectacle? How might the landscape be transformed once the rivers of flame solidify into new formations? What creatures have fled this eruption, and which might be waiting to claim the freshly scorched earth as home? In the face of such overwhelming natural power, what does it remind us about our own transience on this ever-changing planet?
"Wai-O-Tapu No. 1" | 56 x 42 cm | soft pastels on watercolour paper
The 'Thermal Wonderland' was endlessly fascinating and inspiring for me as an artist – so many interesting minerals and colours and colour combinations. In a perfect painter's world I would have been able and allowed to simply scoop up all the pigments, but well…
This painting shows Lake Ngakoro ('the grandfather'). The lake was created during an eruption about 700 years ago – and it is very green!
During volcanic eruptions, (above, Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano) colliding particles of ash create immense levels of electricity, released as volcanic lightning.