When entire neighborhoods in Palisades, California, burned down in early 2025, artist Ruth Askren felt survivor’s guilt. She had grown up in the Palisades, but her childhood home had emerged unscathed in the wildfires that claimed over 6,000 structures.
That’s when the 72-year-old artist began volunteering with Homes in Memoriam, a collective of artists who paint free home portraits for families displaced by the wildfires.
“For me, it was a matter of feeling really compelled to do something,” Askren told the LA Times. “And this is what I do. I mean, this is it: I’m a painter. This is what I can do to help people cope with their loss in the smallest of ways.”
After being paired with a family, Askren works from a composite of old photographs to recreate their lost home, being sure to add the personal touches, like the way tree branches cast shadows on a façade, or the glow that emits from an upstairs window.
“Painting this special house gave me a sense of how it was like a living thing,” Askren said of one home, a yellow house with a sloping roof, that was gifted to the Vaziri Family.
“I guess that’s a projection, but its personality came through,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “It felt like an entity that could morph according to the needs of its dwellers.”
The project has been emotional for the families who receive them, but Askren said that the process has been therapeutic for her, too.
“The Homes in Memoriam project has helped me process the losses,” Askren said. “These homes and others will live on in the paintings created by loving hands, sharing the joy and the grief.”
A version of this article originally appeared in the 2026 Home Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image via RDNE Stock project
