#3037 "Wildfire Skies at Singleton"

#3037 "Wildfire Skies at Singleton"
14 X 11 (inches) Oils on canvas.
Started at 10:30 am Monday, August 10th, 2026

My friend John Verburg took this image after an afternoon of swimming in the beautiful, deep waters of Red Horse Lake. This picture was taken just ten minutes after John composed the inspiration for #3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset" just downstream at the entrance to Long Reach. John Verburg's pontoon boat was very near N44.522211 W76.104719 when he paused to observe this next inspiration at the exit of Jim Day Rapids. John is always on the lookout for something that speaks to him. Typically, what inspires John to photograph also speaks to me, encouraging an interpretation in oils. 

The sky was literally on fire! Smoke from the wildfires in the Boreal Forest and the Rocky Mountains of Canada and the United States wafted all over North America. 

I needed to chronicle those skies for posterity. I am not Edvard Munch (1863-1944), nor is this his most famous work, "The Scream" from 1893. Otherwise, the comparison of witnessing the threats to nature is identical. 

As an aside, I have seen at least one version of "The Scream" at the Norwegian National Gallery in Oslo. I was nose-to-nose with countless other incredible works of art, including some selfies by Vincent! The  National Gallery in Oslo was one of the finest galleries I have ever had the opportunity to visit. 

Now back to the story... The Norwegian name of Munch's painting is Skrik, which is 'Scream' in English. The German title under which it was first exhibited is Der Schrei der Natur,  'The Scream of Nature' in English. The agonized face in the painting has become one of the most iconic images in art.

In his diary entry headed "Nice 22 January 1892", Munch wrote:

"One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord – the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream."

Munch later described his inspiration for the painting:

"I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."

Some scholars believe that Munch was describing a panic attack. They have located the spot along a fjord path overlooking Oslo. In 1893, that road on Ekeberg Hill was near Kristiania (present-day Oslo) and led to a house where the artist lived for a while.

There are various explanations for the unnaturally orange sky, ranging from the effects of a volcanic eruption to a psychological reaction by Munch to his sister's commitment at a nearby lunatic asylum.

Munch,1895, The Scream, Pastel

Munch created two versions in paint and two in pastels, as well as a lithograph stone from which several prints survive. Both painted versions have been stolen from public museums, but have since been recovered. Munch created several variations on this theme with different figures in the front right and versions of the two strolling gentlemen, sometimes looking over the edge.

 The 1895 pastel version (image to the right) sold at Sotheby's in New York in 2012 for $119,922,500. That set a new world record as the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction at that time. Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi currently holds the record for the most expensive artwork. It fetched $450.3 million at Christie's in New York in 2017. Neither artist saw a dime of that cash. 

The impacts of fossil fuel combustion were still a matter of conjecture in the 1890s, when 'The Scream of Nature' was becoming famous. Coal was big! The automobile and the discovery of vast reserves of "liquid gold" or "Texas Tea" were in the future with the Age of Oil. Francis Molina’s article Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate — What Scientists Predict for the Future would not be published in New York’s Popular Mechanics until 1912.

Just a century later (not a few, as hoped for in Popular Mechanics), the Earth is in the verification stages of those dire forecasts. The corporate media has utterly failed to tell the story of what it means to release 14 million years of sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere in less than 200 years. Severe impacts are being observed daily. Informed citizens are challenging leaders to take drastic action. 

My goals are not so lofty. My painting will probably go unnoticed and is unlikely to have the impact of Munch's 'The Scream of Nature'.  I just wanted to put those smoky skies within the context of the Jim Day Swimming Hole. We frequent those classic red chairs when the atmosphere is not so full of smoke and those small yet hazardous particulates. The PM2.5 micron particles produced by combustion are 30 times smaller than a human hair! Those particles penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, causing inflammation. Not good...

The story behind those smoky skies can also be found in #3032 "Killbear Lighthouse Smoky Sunrise" as well as several of my science blogs. The air quality in Toronto was the worst on the planet in July as a result of wildfires. Distant, catastrophic events can still have very local impacts. We are all in this together with nature. 

As a meteorologist, I have been appalled since very early in my career by the lack of political leadership. Politicians and corporate leaders have failed miserably to address the largest, existential issue that threatens all life on Earth. Even worse, political leaders have undermined research on climate change and the scientists involved in developing and disseminating those facts. Multiple "program reviews" and funding cuts to environmental services were the norm in Canada throughout my career. 

All of humanity should be screaming at the abuses of nature and the planet by the powerful, wealthy and well-connected few - simple, arrogant, ignorant greed at the expense of the "little blue planet". The following graphic summarizes the truth of this science...

A strong case can be made that the Canadian political war on science (the search for understanding and the truth) started even before the early 1980s, back to the sixties and the Avro Arrow. Canadian science was leading the world in many fields in the early 1960s, including meteorology. 

Somehow, that knowledge conflicted with the political view of Canada as a global energy superpower. The brand of the political party was irrelevant, as they all lusted for power and wealth. Fossil fuels had to be subsidized and rebranded as "energy", thus disguising their existential links to carbon. That conception continues to this day with escalating political sanctioning (support) of oil, gas, fracking, pipelines ... a very long and misguided list of so-called "nation-building" projects that includes the high-speed rail project, Alto. Shame.

Instead, political leaders should be sanctioning (punishing) those who continue to destroy the environment for personal profit. That too is a very long list. Clear-cutting forests, including ancient, old-growth ecosystems, at a time when carbon needs to be resequestered is just wrong as well as incredibly stupid. 

Ignorance is not bliss... please be informed. 

The colours are real, but being beyond human experience, like "The Scream of Nature", some may find them challenging to believe. I wanted the heat to shimmer in both the sky and the reflective waters. The science is clear, while the politics are murky at best.

The other story behind this composition is that climate change has created two empty chairs at sunset in the natural Singleton paradise… due to heat and the PM2.5 particulates. There will be millions of permanently empty chairs in 50 years... billions by 2100. 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick