TUJUNGA — Karen Winters has painted the mountainous landscape outside of the McGroarty Arts Center before — only then it hadn’t been ripped bare by a raging wildfire.
As she stood in front of a canvas here Monday, trying to capture the expanse of the valley and jagged mountain ridges facing her, it was clear that the view was not the same.
“I just remember it being a whole lot more green,” she said as she gazed at what now looks like a charred desert mound.
Winters last painted the mountains in January, albeit from a different vantage point in La Cañada Flintridge. That work has become a kind of historical record of what the mountains looked like after decades without a fire, she said.
“This looks radically different,” she said of the January piece, now on display at the center.
The lush mountainsides of the Angeles National Forest have for decades offered inspiration to area artists, but in the wake of the Station fire’s tear through the area, the cleared landscape will now serve as the basis for a set of works unique to the recovering ecosystem, artists said.
It will also serve a as reminder of firefighters’ hard work, one of the reasons the Angeles Crest Artists Guild has decided to send all proceeds from their exhibit at the center toward a memorial fund for fire Specialist Arnaldo Quinones and Capt. Tedmund Hall, who died battling the blaze.
Their efforts and the work of other emergency responders helped to protect nearby homes as the fire clawed its way through the forest, said Lizz Tucker, president of the guild.
“These guys fight for our homes and our property as if it’s their own,” Tucker said.
The burned forest, however, has been an emotional drain, especially for artists who often took pleasure in depicting swaths of the lush mountain preserve, said artist Libby Ellis, a member of the guild.
Looking up at a bare mountains has been almost as surreal and emotional as it was to watch them burning, Ellis said.
“Even though I don’t draw the mountains, I draw upon the mountains for inspiration,” she said.
Artists often enjoyed painting images of poppy and eucalyptus, captured within some of the works on display at the center, which has given the new environment a different impact , Tucker said.
“I was watching them burn,” Tucker said of the eucalyptus trees she had drawn frequently.
While losing the thick vegetation may be a sad change , it will present new opportunities for artists to capture a window in time of how the area looks as it recovers, Tucker said.
“It’s just going to give a very different perspective of what California beauty is,” she said.
