Oooh, explosions!  This is the big, beautiful work of San Francisco based artist Rachel Sager. What are you looking at? Charcoal and oil on canvas! What is it all about? Well, I’ll hand this over to Rachel:

“My current body of work continues an examination of matter in transformation; metamorphosis, one state to another.   I am particularly drawn to how such elemental shifts coincide with the sometimes devastating effects of human beings on the world around them.  Here, I portray this transmutation of matter as calculated explosions on aerial landscapes; the ground living, breathing, and dying all at once, in a heavenly haze. Simultaneously, these images of meteoric combustion and uncertainty loosely depict colorful images of global warming as seen on climate change maps, thus liberating the mind from any certain and singular symbolism. Created through a unique process of brushing, rubbing and dusting, my charcoal underpaintings are comprised of the same material they seek to portray, the natural tools of my chosen trade.  The charcoal is left in its crude form in order to create an organic, almost visceral surface on which the lush properties of oil paint naturally contrast.”  

Boom, indeed.