Local officials gathered in Hemphill County’s 31st District Courtroom Tuesday morning for the presentation of two paintings by artist Richard Sukup, commemorating the 2024 Smokehouse Creek Wildfire which caused devastating damage to this and adjoining counties in the northeastern Panhandle.
One painting, titled Perseverance, will hang in the Hemphill County Courthouse. It was purchased by Randall County Judge Christy Dyer, and presented as a gift to this county’s residents.
Both Judge Dyer and the artist were on hand for the presentation. Dyer credited County Judge Lisa Johnson with having inspired the gift. “I don’t have to tell you about Judge Johnson,” she told those gathered at the courthouse, “but her strength and her character, her hard work, her inspiration made me so impressed and so proud to call her my friend.”
“When your community suffered the struggles you did,” she said, “I sat in prayer, just thinking, as a county judge, what she’s going to have to go through. And you have no idea. Everybody has their lane, their expertise, whether it’s our friends from DPS, whether it’s TDEM (the Texas Department of Emergency Management), whether it’s the volunteer fire department…but they all expect you to answer.”
“It’s just a very difficult position to be in when your community, your town, became surrounded with flames,” she added. “There was nothing I could do for my friend, except to get on my knees and pray, and that’s what I did.”
Dyer discovered Sukup’s painting at a benefit auction during a Rangeland Fire Relief Benefit dinner and concert headlined by Michael Martin Murphey and Lyle Lovett, to raise money for families and businesses affected by the wildfires. When she saw it, Dyer immediately realized that it did not belong on anybody’s home wall.
“This is exactly what you’re going through,” she said, “the perseverance of being able to rebuild, figure out, pick up the pieces…how you’re going to help your neighbors, how you’re going to help your friends, how you’re going to help yourself. I just knew right then that it needed to be in the Hemphill County Courthouse.”
After engaging in and eventually losing a bidding war for the piece with Murphey’s wife, Dyer handed her a business card, and said, “If you change your mind, I’d really like to purchase the painting,” and then explained why.
“By the next morning, they called me and said, ‘Come get your painting,’” Judge Dyer recalled. “So I did.”
“The perseverance that your community had to go through to rebuild…I think that was the inspiration the artist had for it,” she explained, “and certainly the inspiration for me purchasing it and putting it in the courthouse so that your citizens will remember that we’re going to have another trial. We’re going to have another test. Dig deep. You know you can do it. You’ve been through it before, and we’ll get through it again.”
When the artist learned what Judge Dyer’s plans for the painting were, he told her. “I’d like to do one for the firemen.”
That conversation inspired a second piece presented Tuesday morning to Canadian Fire Chief Scott Brewster. Appropriately, it will reside in the fire station.
A native of Fort Worth, Sukup said he earned his engineering degree at Oklahoma State University, and had several friends in this area who attended OSU. Now retired from his work with Mobile Oil and as a self-employed energy engineer, he has taken up painting, and was inspired by the recent fires to create the work he called Perseverance, which captures a lone ranger on horseback assessing the damage from the Smokehouse Creek Fire.
Sukup read from the text he had written for a plaque which accompanies his work: “As he descends into the vastness of burnt rangeland, devastation, despair and grief arises. He sees but a few white-faced Herefords huddled underneath a burned cedar elm tree, and he recalls, growing up, his father’s words: ‘It doesn’t get any easier,’ a call forth to persevere and rebuild their lives.”
The second piece, titled Only the Courageous, depicts an eerily familiar scene of firefighters battling a wall of flame. It honors the volunteer firefighters who rushed to subdue the deadly wildfire and help the suffering county citizens to save what was left. Inspired by their sacrifice, Sukup wrote, “Oh, our brave firefighters, into the ferocious fires with resolve. The flames cover it well, heroic hearts involved, to find the helpless there still. Take our life, Lord, for another, if I must, that they may live and may recover our sacred oath in trust.”
Judge Johnson thanked both the artist and the donor. “The way we got through this was the love and support of so many people,” she said. “People showed up in different ways for us. We showed up for each other in different ways. But what you’ve done to capture this experience, and the generosity that you’ve demonstrated to all of us, is very precious.”
Standing before the painting of firefighters, Johnson said, “It’s stunningly beautiful, and at the same time, very haunting, because it really does capture what we saw and experienced.”
“Our community is very resilient, and we do persevere,” she said, adding, “It’s been a little difficult to hear that some of our producers and our ranchers have struggled with the thought of trying to rebuild their herds…so we continue to pray that they will be inspired to carry on.”
“Thank you all very much,” Judge Johnson concluded. “We are a grateful county and city.”
