Rebuilding Sonoma County: Artist finds beauty in the pain unleashed by October wildfires

Rachel Forbis still vividly remembers the night the Tubbs fire came exploding over the hill in a ball of red and yellow light. “It's impossible to get the images out of my head,” the 30-year-old Santa Rosa artist said.

Her home was located on her parents' charming 2.5-acre Larkfield estate, a place she describes as a “childhood paradise, a utopia.” On the night of Oct. 8, 2017, she tucked her 2-year-old toddler, Sofia into bed. Soon Forbis was sleeping next to her husband, Jake, feeling safe and secure.

At 1 a.m., a deafening roar shattered that sense of security. Within minutes, the place she'd lived her entire life would be devoured by a wall of flames.

“Looking back at that night - I'll try not to get emotional - but I don't know how we got out. I really don't,” she said recalling their escape.

“It's a miracle because we only had one way out,” she said. “We had that road and that was it. I was in fight or flight mode and in the moment I could not see anything.”

It took just 20 minutes for the blaze to rip through her neighborhood, demolishing her home and her parent's adjacent home on Angela Drive. Longtime neighbors Donna and Leroy Halbur, who lived in the house next door, perished in the firestorm. Both were 80 years old and had just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

“I knew they didn't make it out that night. Their field was on fire and we were driving through the flames,” Forbis said amid tears. “Their house was behind the fields so it already hit their house at that point.”

After her narrow escape, Forbis and her family drove to her aunt's house in Cloverdale. Ten days later, Forbis discovered she was pregnant with twins.

She was elated with the news.

“It was like this double rainbow,” she said smiling. “I didn't think about the fire after I found out.”

Forbis looking forward to a bright, happy future, a new beginning. But six months into her pregnancy, she learned that complications would cause her to lose her unborn babies.

To memorialize her twins, she created an elaborate tattoo that covers most of her forearm.

“I got the tattoo on my twins' due date,” she said in tears. “My due date was June 22, and I designed two sunflowers for my sons. They're connected by a stem because they were sharing life, and I did a heart around where the connection is.

“I also added the address 222 to remember my home.”

Forbis, a conceptual artist who specializes in custom paintings, drawings, murals and other types of graphics for clients, lost her desire to make art. She spent painful days, weeks and months being in what she called “a dark place.” Then she realized she had a choice. She could numb her pain with alcohol or create a new life filled with art, love and compassion.

The turning point came when a family asked her to create a portrait of their home in Mark West Estates, which had also been lost in the fire. Forbis decided to paint it on a stepping stone retrieved from the rubble of her own burned home.

“I took a piece of a stepping stone from my house, so it had a lot of heart in it. Not only because I painted it but it is a part of my memories that I am able to give to them.”

Forbis began collecting remnants from the fires - bricks from charred fireplaces, stones from gardens and pieces of splintered, burned fencing - to use as canvasses for her art.

“I took all that, and I just started painting like crazy, and I started giving rocks to friends who lost their homes,” she said. “On one of the stones I wrote a quote that said, ‘You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only thing you have.'

“To see their reaction and see them cry, it gave me a purpose. It was really healing.”

Now, on the first anniversary of the wildfires, Forbis can barely keep up with the demand. She gives away many of her smaller paintings as gifts to fire survivors; larger works are sold for a commission. She loves hearing her customers' stories and sharing her own.

“It's been such a halting event in my life,” she said. “You're forced to just start over.

“You think of your life as then and now. Just everything has been washed away and there's no proof of anything.”