Alex Idoko doesn’t wield your average artist toolkit. Instead of paintbrushes, Idoko has blowtorches. Instead of paint tubes, he has cans of gas. And instead of paint? Fire. 

Idoko is a self-taught pyrography artist based in Abuja, Nigeria. Pyrography, or the art of decorating or writing a surface with fire, has been around as long as humans have been making–and taming–fire. But Idoko has revolutionized the field with his self-titled technique called “pyro-fusionism.”