RA 14H39M37S DEC -60 50’ 2”
HUMANKIND BE VIGILANT; WE LOVED YOU.
© 2025, CHERYL CHARLI
ECOLOGY & ENAMEL PAINT (2020—Early 2023)
Auguries of Augusts Past: The Dance of Vesuvius and Krakatoa (2022)
Paint on canvas
This one was made in remembrance of two volcanic eruptions in history, both occuring around the same time in August, 1804 years apart, that I'm particularly fascinated and horrified by – Mount Vesuvius (Rome), on August 24 79 A.D., and Krakatoa (Indonesia), on August 26 1883. I've been obsessed with Pompeii since I was 6, but at that age who really comprehends the sheer magnitude and devastation of these monstrosities?
Vesuvius buried the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum under a deep layer of compacted ash, preserving them intact. Krakatoa's eruption had four times the destructive force of the most powerful thermonuclear bomb exploded at the time, launching six cubic miles of earth into the sky and starting a series of gigantic tsunamis that consumed coastal villages. The drifting haze of ash and dust lowered temperatures around the world for several years, causing strange phantasmagoric skies with blue-tinted suns and fantastical sunsets.
My love for the natural world, particularly volcanoes, is one akin to a deep reverence – I don't think it is possible to experience the natural world in any meaningful way without being fully engulfed by it.
In the throes of searching for, losing, and yearning for perspective and meaning, phenomena like volcanic activity remind us of our cosmic insignificance. while i've always found that comforting, I've spoken with friends who find it terrifying: that our short lives in the grand narrative of the universe – a tapestry of of the universe woven by itself, for itself (not us) – don't matter. our stories may be told only to those who care to know us. and i cannot promise our stories will not be forgotten. But I can promise you it does matter.
Our present existence has always been but a cosmic blink against the immensity of eternity. But even forever, the unquantifiable quantified, seems an irrelevant measure to pit something as deeply rich as a life against: sometimes forever is a day. Or a lifetime. And perhaps all that's needed for our lives to matter is that we are here, and it did happen.
What You Love You Must Love Now (2022)
Mixed media on canvas
I once took a silly quiz that told me the emotion I create from is Grief. The most accurate result would have been Longing, or Yearning. But even more accurately, it would be Love. There are many things in this life that come disguised as love – some ways malicious, and others, more painful than others. But at the core of it, like The Eagles once sang, "love will keep us alive".
The world is terrible and wonderful and I have always been intrigued by the cosmos and the great beyond, at mountains and volcanoes and oceans. But right here, right around us there is already so much to celebrate. And it reminds us that this world is bigger than myself, and it's in the joy we feel for the things and people we love. This work is a celebration of the love and care, the checking-in-on-yous, the how-are-yous, the this-made-me-think-of-yous. It's the love that we are lucky enough to have received in this lifetime that give us a reason to stay another day, that we feel undeserving of, that we will hold to. Sometimes we are given a love that lasts us several lifetimes. and in the bleak midwinter, it keeps us warm. We hold on for dawn. And all the rest is confetti.
The Fifth Dimension, 2022
Two-way mirror film on acrylic panel in reversed painted stretcher
Ileleste, 2022 (First Rendition)
Acrylic mirror panels, acrylic on underside of canvas, reversed stretcher
This piece is done from behind because I like to dismantle store-bought canvases. Inspired by the colour blue, and the Tearfall, or the Sundering, from the last millennium during the Days of Thunder (D&D Forgotten Realms lore). Stories are what we tell ourselves to make sense of a world steeped in chaos. Somewhere along the way, they become our truths.
©2025 CHERYL CHARLI