CLOUDS

Following on from my post about clouds on Friday – this was a satellite view of Merseyside in the middle of the afternoon. Somewhere under that lot was the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, and me!

CLOUDS

I recall from my earliest days of trying to paint with watercolours that my Mum used to say how difficult she found painting clouds. It seems strange that something that is so variable should be so hard to paint. You would think it would look realistic however it came out simply because the real thing is so variable. In practice we have our own image of what clouds should look like and although we can accept that they do vary enormously we expect anyone painting them to produce a few fluffy white cumulus and leave it at that. Ironically, fluffy white cumulus are, as my Mum pointed out, hard to paint. So I’m back where I started!

Clouds

 

GB and I watched an episode of the TV drama “Lewis” (a spin-off from “Morse”) the other night. One of the characters with a personality disorder spent hours in front of paintings by Constable marvelling at the clouds. He was fascinated by the fact that clouds were only to be seen at that time on that day. Never again would the clouds be the same. I feel somewhat similar as I look around at GB‘s. The sky is visible in every direction - something that is so lacking in an urban environment. And the clouds are ever-changing. Because of the windy nature of the climate the changes are rapid. It gives me such a sensation of being a tiny thing on the planet and of the fleeting nature of my own being as I watch these clouds which will never be the same again.