On a quiet summer evening in June 1990, Pico Iyer sat in his family home in Santa Barbara, Calif., when suddenly, he was surrounded by walls of flames five stories high.

Keni Arts, as Keni Davis is known, was friendly and willing to talk – so long as he could keep painting.

Alaskan painter Jon Van Zyle has named his final Iditarod poster “Embers,” as a fire comes to an end, embers are the final ...