I love storms, the evocative sensations of thunder and lightening and the eerie colors and ozone laden scents that prevail all combine to ramp up my creative impulses. (Ok, I admit I am not so thrilled when the power cuts out, but that’s a frustration that thankfully doesn’t occur with every strom.) I even have a CD that is the audible story of a storm moving in, deluge hammering the flagstones, and finally moving off – and I find it very restful to fall asleep listening to. Visually, there are swirling clouds of deep and often unusual colors, flights of birds as they flee an oncoming storm, stars shining through breaks in ground-lit clouds.

Visually, there are the amazing images of storms taken from overhead by satillites that circle our globe and these are amazing for the paradoxical serentiy of the white clouds swirling violently above the planet surface.

Two of my strom inspired paintings are very much studies of cloud activity. One of them, Birds Fleeing a Funnel Storm, was inspired (and worked out) by a storm I watched through the picture window in my mother’s dining room. The dark storm clouds writhed and swirled and in the very far distance there was a much calmer but still oddly colored orang-yellow sky. The birds few past quickly and I added the develooping funnel as an artist’s perogative (much like poetic license).

Birds Fleeing a Funnel Storm

The other storm inspired landscape is also part of my astronomy inspired series. It depects my impression of a scene that greeted me when I came home late one night while I still lived in Maryland. The Baltimore area has a lot of light pollution that colors the clouds, making them a reddish purple that is both unnatural and beautiful. The storm in this painting has yet to fully overcome the sky and let loose its deluge, but it could equally be the sky as the storm is breaking up. The Moon is behind the palest of the thinnest clouds. I love this painting.

Before the Storm

I am sure that my penchant for painting storms is not yet worked out. There is something exceedingly inspiring about storms, about the restlessness of the clouds, about the energy contained within and about the electric interaction between ground and sky. If only they weren’t so often deadly.

Do you like storms or hate them? Tell your storm story here!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 1:53 PM and is filed under Artist at Work, Contemplation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.