April 10, 2025
Written and recorded by Gallery & Curatorial Fellow Cat Teo
In Michael Zachary’s painting Burn Area: Stream Bed, he takes us on a journey of destruction and regrowth throughout time, beginning five billion years ago at the creation of Earth. Utilizing his striking CMYK color palette along with his unique technique of cross-hatching, Zachary is able to depict the rough terrain of the Montana mountains that inspired many of his pieces. Each color, while vibrant on its own, is carefully placed to create an organic, muddy feeling of rocks and gravel sitting within a streambed. If you look closely, you can even notice each distinct color of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black that are intentionally placed and combined throughout the composition.
Zachary often plays with the idea of cycles, specifically the trauma and regrowth of society and our environment. While much of Michael MacMahon’s work deals with historical destruction and the eventual change that goes back centuries, Zachary says he felt inspired to work with this theme but draws inspiration from more recent ecological devastation.
This previous summer, while he was at an artist residency in Montana, Zachary found himself hiking within the mountains, curious about the landscape and terrain. He became enamored with the mountain’s history, the very structures formed five billion years ago while the Earth was still molten. The mountains are a testament to Earth’s vast and complicated history, one that these very rocks were present for. Each boulder and pebble has been a witness to humanity’s cyclical nature of trauma and regrowth, repeating indefinitely.
Much of this particular mountainous region in Montana had been devastated by wildfires that burned out of control and scorched the land. While hiking through the region, Zachary found himself in the middle of the aftermath, which left behind charred remnants of rubble and ash. The rocks from the very mountains that had seen the formation of the world were now being broken down by erosion into mere fragments.
Burn Area: Streambed depicts this phenomenon, the gravel and ash mixing and swirling together within the water. These ancient and formidable mountains are being rendered by entropy into their most basic elemental forms, eventually settling at the bottom of a streambed. Burn Area: Streambed asks us the question: Is this the end or the start of something new? Is this the final act, or does our cycle begin again through regrowth and new beginnings?
The painting is also able to draw the viewer in because of its connection to the body and movement. Up close, it’s difficult to make out any distinguishable shapes; however, once you step back, your brain can start to piece the colors together, a common feature of Michael Zachary’s artwork.
Zachary enjoys playing with the bodily connection a person can have with his artwork; the viewer often needs to step forward and backward to get a full understanding of what they are looking at. Both MacMahon and Zachary believe that introducing ambiguity allows for the viewers to reflect and read their own interpretations and meanings into the paintings. This ambiguity is on full display within Burn Area: Streambed, one of Michael Zachary’s most abstract pieces within the show.
Burn Area: Streambed brings forward many pressing topics and ideas about Earth and humanity’s recurrent and cyclical nature. Over and over again, we find ourselves in traumatic situations, yet one of the most human characteristics is our ability to rebuild. Ask yourself, where do you find these areas of trauma and regrowth in our world? What do you think this says about our society? And how might we find ourselves breaking out of this cycle and forging a new path?