Chemical Schematic by William Swanson

Balmy November greetings collectors! It's Sara filling in for Jen on this eerily warm afternoon. Temps are supposed to hit the high sixties today even with winter supposedly right around the corner. I don't want to beat the global-warming-dead-horse with a stick but I am—this unseasonable weather is strange, isn't it?

Still, not pulling on the winter wools just yet is pleasing, almost as pleasing as the pinks and purples in today's edition from William Swanson: Chemical Schematic. Pretty as it is, Swanson's palette is also unsettling.

Swanson highlights the direct relationship between the variety of colors that appear as the sun falls over the horizon and the level of pollution in the air. The more brilliant a sunset, the dirtier the sky, and yet we still ooh and ahh over it. Just as we're happily forgoing a hat and gloves for now, we take an odd pleasure in conveniently forgetting the facts surrounding glowing skies in the evening hours. Ignorance is bliss! But, cleverly, Swanson inserts reminders of human interference in his paintings—an architectural grid, evidence of an oily pool of water and slightly foreboding skies.

Just as last week's edition from Tyson Anthony Roberts hinted at our ever-changing environment, Swanson's work fuses our planet's past, present and future, foreshadowing sparks, glory and doom. As the boys over at DCKT said, "Holding to a belief that disaster can be a transformative process, Swanson's spaces play with end into beginning as in all natural cycles."