This time of year always gets me thinking about storms. August and September mean it's hurricane season again. Soon we will be looking at the slowly revolving, ominously expanding spirals of hurricanes clouds seen from above in satellite images. I’ve always been easily hypnotized by the violence of wind and rain. I’ll be unable to look away from tree branches moving frantically and erratically in the wind. I can’t take my eyes from water drops sluicing down window glass or rippling puddles in the road, expanding into instant lakes.
When I lived on the east coast, muggy summer weather was always punctuated by the drama of thunder storms. You could smell them coming-- there was a tinge of ozone in the air. The most amazing lightening storms I ever saw were in Texas where the big sky lit up with a bright forest of jagged strikes in pink and white.
Even ordinary landscapes take on extraordinary dimensions when in the grip of a storm. Artists have always understood the drama of storms and exploited the excitement that storms clouds and lightening strikes bring to skies to make more interesting pictures.
George Burr was a master American print maker of the 1930s. I recently did this drawing in ink and graphite after Burr’s etching “Arizona Storm.” Enormous thunderheads darken the Arizona sky. They dwarf the eroded and mysterious ruins of the desert landscape swept with fierce winds and rain.
Turner was a master of dramatic light effects. He worked his magic on waterfalls, rainbows, and the cloudbursts of light rays showering from the heavens. He also did a masterful job of painting storms at sea by exploiting the drama of roiling waves and stormy skies. I did this new drawing in white chalk on black paper after Turner’s mezzotint print of “Catania, Sicily.” You can read more about Turner’s dramatic approach to landscape in Andrew Wilton’s book, Turner and the Sublime.
When I lived on the east coast, muggy summer weather was always punctuated by the drama of thunder storms. You could smell them coming-- there was a tinge of ozone in the air. The most amazing lightening storms I ever saw were in Texas where the big sky lit up with a bright forest of jagged strikes in pink and white.
Even ordinary landscapes take on extraordinary dimensions when in the grip of a storm. Artists have always understood the drama of storms and exploited the excitement that storms clouds and lightening strikes bring to skies to make more interesting pictures.
George Burr was a master American print maker of the 1930s. I recently did this drawing in ink and graphite after Burr’s etching “Arizona Storm.” Enormous thunderheads darken the Arizona sky. They dwarf the eroded and mysterious ruins of the desert landscape swept with fierce winds and rain.
Turner was a master of dramatic light effects. He worked his magic on waterfalls, rainbows, and the cloudbursts of light rays showering from the heavens. He also did a masterful job of painting storms at sea by exploiting the drama of roiling waves and stormy skies. I did this new drawing in white chalk on black paper after Turner’s mezzotint print of “Catania, Sicily.” You can read more about Turner’s dramatic approach to landscape in Andrew Wilton’s book, Turner and the Sublime.
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