I have always wanted to submit artwork to the royal academy’s annual Summer Exhibition. This year themes of the brief included “ecological threat” and “climate change” when first reading this my mind jumped to the work that I was making at the time “Conflagration”

As stated in the dictionary a conflagration is”an extensive fire which destroys a great deal of land or property“

Around the time I was developing this work global attention was on Australia and the devastating bushfires.  At this point looking at the artwork it took on a new meaning. I had to respond to in a new context relating to the bushfires. To intensify the ‘blaze’  I layered my own mix of materials along what became the bottom of the canvas. The aim was to merge the canvas and flames together creating a melting canvas effect, symbolising the spreading of the bushfires.