I painted this curiously beautiful scene from a series of photos I had taken from a news report on 3 July 2019 when Stromboli in Italy erupted. While watching the news report I was initially struck by the colours of the smoke which I have painted as close to the photo image as possible, so I grabbed my phone and took some photos directly of the tv screen. This is something I have been experimenting with lately and I am enjoying the spontaneity and variety of the exercise. The smoke fitted perfectly with my colour palette of late.

Something I am aware of is the violence of the eruption and it’s consequences for the people living in the white painted houses depicted in the painting, another reason for me to capture these fleeting images as I see it, giving them elevation, resonance and importance- disasters are reported all too fleetingly and we are all too often immune to their gravity.