“Emma did an amazing job with this piece. Looking at the two beautiful pieces of art brings the scope of the outdoors into my indoors. And then the detail of the little barn really broadens the expanse of the sky. It’s just the perfect piece.”
Recovered barn doors painted with a modern country aesthetic.
My co-worker Lynn, who is also an artist (a professional quilter among many other talents), approached me with a vision for an artwork. She had found a set of barn doors, sanded them, and painted them white. She envisioned a painting with a cloudy sky and a classic red barn to match her country farmhouse aesthetic. I was intrigued by the opportunity to paint evocative scenery on an unusual surface.
I pictured a rainy day in western Maryland, where the air and ground are saturated with water. I create a few versions. The result was the artwork below: massive cumulous clouds against a cerulean sky.
The grass has bright patches, indicating that the sunlight is penetrating through the clouds.
I painted the barn with a lot of detail, so that you would feel compelled to come closer to the painting. The barn also gives the composition a sense of scale.
Voilà! The artwork was installed in the hallway.
A Note on John Constable
When I think of clouds, I can’t help but think of John Constable’s paintings of clouds from the early 1820s. John Constable (b. 1776 - d. 1837) was a Romantic painter known for his quintessentially English landscape paintings (Constable notoriously never once left the country). I was around nineteen when I saw my first Constables in person at the National Gallery of Art in London. At the time I was working as an apprentice to an oil painter in Lincolnshire (a story for another time, but you can see his art here if you’re curious: James Gillick). In the National Gallery there was a small exhibit tucked away with ten or so Constable paintings only about seven or eight inches wide. I was struck by their beauty and the way I connected emotionally with them.
Constable captured clouds under all manner of conditions. He labeled almost all of his paintings with scientific precision, indicating the date, time, wind, and weather conditions. The result was a great variety of clouds in different seasons, evoking various moods, all with subtle texture and temperature contrasts.
Take the painting below. At first glance it appears to be a neutral, gray sky. Unless you really like paintings of clouds, you might just walk right by it in a museum. However, with some slow looking you may detect a subtle interplay of warm and cool, with hints of blue and magenta. The longer you look at this painting, the more colors you see.
In 1928, Constable's wife died. Most of the landscapes from that period onward feature dark, brooding clouds.
Painting clouds is difficult. The subject is ephemeral and fickle. But in paintings of clouds, we can find a reflection of our emotions. There is a sky for every feeling.