Chloe Allred

Chloe Allred is an artist, writer, and a tenure-track art professor at Copper Mountain College in Joshua Tree. Her paintings and writing have been featured in Orange Coast Magazine, USA Today, the BBC, and she is a contributing artist and writer to “We Believe You: Stories of Campus Sexual Violence” published by Henry Holt. Allred’s work ranges from Surrealist landscapes/portraits to strange still life paintings. 

I created this painting following the death of my mom. Cancer hit us like a whirlwind. In late August my mom was diagnosed. It had begun in her appendix and spread through-out her body. She was told she had one to two years to live. My mom died on October 16th. 

This painting encapsulates a moment, a few days following my mom’s death, where I saw an incredibly vivid sunset. The sunset mixed with the intensity of my emotions. It was so beautiful, but almost painful to look at. It felt like my own heart was pouring out into the sky. I felt like my mom was somehow in that swirl of color and clouds. The sunset was such a stark contrast to the darkness of cancer and the swell of grief in my chest. I could hear my mom, in her funny and earnest way, go “Oh! So beautiful!” That sunset would have made her laugh with joy; this painting gives me a way to hold on to that memory.