I always thought fire was something that happened to other people, in other places. But when you stand there, watching the flames take everything that was once whole, you realize how quickly your world can just collapse. You want to save something, anything, but all you can do is stand there and watch. It’s humbling, and it’s heartbreaking, but it also leaves you with a strange kind of clarity.

As I stood there and watched my house burning to the ground, flowers screamed, trees cried, and all birds and animals sang the gloomiest Sunday song together. The mountains roared in solidarity, and the seas joined them momentarily. Nothing and no one could be saved as we all witnessed the great downfall. Yet, I saw the bright dawn after the sky fell. Was it real, or was it a dream? Am I dead, or is there still hope?

This series began in 2025, when the war finally reached us. It had been creeping toward us through our neighbors for a long time, but we lived in a state of denial, never truly believing we would be next. When we were, the helplessness was absolute. I felt a heavy, deep survivor’s guilt that wouldn’t let go.

I started painting to keep from going fully under. It became my meditation, my only way to survive the days without going crazy. I was cut off from the world, no internet, no connection, just a small, offline archive of music playing on repeat. In the quiet, I started painting life and color right beside the explosions. I needed to see hope to feel it.

You’ll find lyrics from those songs woven into some of the paintings. There was one title from an exhibition at the Argo Factory, Tomorrow is a Question, that just kept looping in my head. Back then, tomorrow really was a massive question. These paintings are what I saw when the sky fell, and what I found when I kept looking for the dawn.