During the summers and autumns of 1820-22 John Constable was painting ‘en plein air’ at Hampstead Heath…he would set up at the same time each day, with premixed vials of paint to capture the sky and its clouds. He referred to this practice as “skying.” He named “Messenger Clouds,” today know as scud or stratus fractus clouds, those that move at faster speeds under rain clouds. My Messenger series is not about clouds, yet is something of clouds, as I do a lot of skying myself. I watch the clouds in the sky over the East River daily, all times of day and night, all seasons.
I think of clouds as the first abstract art. My research has uncovered clouds being used in the 1490’s in painting to depict immateriality and transparency, as cloud putto, angelic beings that were invisible until they "condensed" and became beings. A single modulated color was used to depict transparency and light by the Quatrocentro painters of Italy in these putto paintings and oddly enough, what I'm doing today. Hubert Damensch’s “A Theory of /Cloud/ and Christian Kleinbub’s essay “At the Boundaries of Sight: The Italian Renaissance Cloud Putto" are illuminating.
Interference paints subtly shift the colors the viewer sees, making the artwork dynamic; reminding us life is always changing. Counter to what the viewer sees, these pigments are colorless; it is their ability to bend light that causes a viewer to perceive a color that’s not really there.
