In California, fires, and especially wildfires, are a background thrum as we go about our lives. We switch to high alert when we hear fire engines, as I did one morning in 2018 when I sensed them in my area. A nearby 50s ranch home, abandoned and rumored to be a makeshift home for migrant workers, went up in flames. I don’t know if anyone was hurt in the fire or what happened to the men who lived there. I never saw anyone during my visits back to the house over the next two years. I observed the charred house slowly disintegrate until it was finally demolished in 202X. The painting suggests both past destruction, with the dilapidated house and blackened palm trees that suggest fire, and future creation, with the regrowth of plants. The lone figure is an ambivalent presence, perhaps creating an elegiac mood of loss or a hopeful anticipation of the future.