‘Jesusita Summerland’. It depicts the debris and damage caused to the residents of Santa Barbara from the Wildfires in 2009. I was a recipient of a Fellowship in Berkeley, California when the fires happened, the immediate aftermath and continuing changes to the landscape engaged my interest.

The fire destroyed the homes of some of America’s wealthiest citizens; indifferent to class, the devastation triggered unexpected results. This scorched landscape provides little evidence of the good life of this once gated community, but what developed is a new exclusive group, bound together in a shared sense of loss, coining the phase ‘California’s Poorest Millionaires’.

Californian cities have been built on invisible boundaries, in areas prone to very specific, strong environmental destroyers - fires, volcanos and fault lines, El Nino - with deserts, snow and mountains in between. It’s a truly diverse eco system and the fragility of the coexistence of Man and Nature sometimes tenuous.