100 Suns

2013–2018

A series of abstract paintings answering nuclear devastation with light, color, and warmth.

100 Suns takes its title from Michael Light’s book 100 SUNS, a photographic record of every atmospheric nuclear weapons test conducted by the United States between 1945 and 1962. When I first came across those images, they stayed with me, stark, apocalyptic, impossible to look away from. I couldn’t shake the feeling of what it meant to hold that much destructive power in a photograph.

This series is my answer to that book. Where Light’s suns mark endings, annihilation rendered almost beautiful, I wanted to paint in the opposite direction: light, color, and warmth answering destruction instead of documenting it. Each painting in the series works through the same weight of subject matter from the other side, insisting that something generative and life-affirming can grow out of contemplating the end of the world.

It’s the most direct response I’ve made to another artist’s work, even though we’ve never spoken. 100 Suns is my rebuttal to nuclear devastation, proof, painting by painting, that creation can answer destruction.

The series comprises 41 abstract paintings, each 22 × 30 inches, created between 2013 and 2018.