3SIXTY5 for Friday, June 4, 2010: Storm Over Fields

An approaching storm is wonderful sight to behold. One of my favorite atmospheric phenomena is when a mass of dark clouds forms opposite the direction of the sun, resulting in a roiling, dark sky behind a sunlit landscape.* This reversal of the usual relative positions of light and dark always makes me catch my breath, no matter how often I see it.  Sometimes, fantastic visions can come out of such clouds:  castles, precipices, mountains, cataracts. They form and dissolve in an instant, disappearing even before your awe-dropped jaw resumes its normal position. This piece is an attempt at rendering such vision.

*I wish I could quote the passage, but in one of the G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, there is an awesome description of such a sight. I read it I think in high school. Alas, too much time & wine have flowed since, and although I can no longer remember the passage (or even the title of the story), I do remember the impression it made on me. When you are young, you invent the world around you, believing with each new observation that you are the first to discover it, that it is yours alone. It was therefore a delightful sensation to find your own thoughts and feelings reflected back at you in a story, painting, or piece of music. It meant you were not alone, that kindred spirits had gone before, stumbled upon the same breath-taking beauty, and recorded it to pass it on to all. I think this is one of the great gifts that the arts give us—the opportunity to discover anew timeless beauty, to feel that intimate relationship with another mind that has passed out of time, to grow and work in an attempt to offer such a gift of our own. One of the reasons we are all here, making art and sharing it.