Painting with fire — this artist's paintings are literally LIT!

Steven Spazuk uses candles and torches of soot on his work — which came to him in a dream — to speak about the destruction of our natural world.

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Do you ever feel as if the world is on fire? You are not alone. For almost two decades, French-Canadian fire artist Steven Spazuk has been using his unique black carbon soot impressions to speak out against the irrevocable degradation we have caused to our natural world.

"For me, a bird on a grenade pulling the pin is so much stronger than anything that I can say with words," he says.

Spazuk literally paints with fire, holding candles and torches up to his paper and panels until they singe the surface, leaving behind black soot marks. The process is called fumage. It is a technique most famously attributed to surrealist painter Wolfgang Paalen in the 1930s, but whose origins are likely much older and more primitive. While Paalen mostly applied soot to a base of oil paint in his works, Spazuk has mastered the art of fumage, effectively making fire and carbon his medium and his subject.

He's been drawing since he was a young boy, but the idea of exchanging his charcoal pencils for actual charcoal came to him in a dream in 2001. Since then, he has learned to perfect his technique, keeping his breath minimal and steady so as not to smear the ephemeral smoke-like markings. Filmmaker Alexander Desouza captured Spazuk's delicate process in a short doc that needs to be seen to truly appreciate the artist's execution.

While there is a quiet meticulousness to his process, the intent of his artwork is loud and urgent. "We need to go back to that idea that we are part of a system, and this ecosystem needs every part of it," he says. "So we cannot tolerate any extinction."

Each black mark singed onto canvas signifies the power of carbon to create. But without a measured hand guiding the flame, it would burn and destroy everything it touches. This requires a delicate balance, a place where apathy cannot exist. And if Spazuk can teach himself how to draw with fire, maybe we can learn something new about our own interactions with the natural world too.

"Our intelligence, our creativity, our ingenuity got us into this mess, and that same creativity and ingenuity will get us out of this mess," he says.

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