Clouds in the River Rhône II, ©John O’Grady
31.65″ x 31.65″ x 1.8″, acrylic and oil on deep edge canvas, ready to hang.
$2190 (approx. €1851 and £1646) with free shipping
A friend at art college was always getting us to lie down on the grass and pick out cloud shapes.
“Look, there’s Mickey Mouse just next to that billowing cumulus of a horse’s head… And over there, Rembrandt’s head with the bulbous nose,…”
And so it would go on, his endless fascination rubbing off on us.
Have you ever played that game? I guess some artists carry on in this vein, seeing possibilities from very little.
Looking and noticing (really seeing) what’s around us becomes second nature and can feed into making paintings.
Part of that awareness is ‘seeing’ the right time to stop working on a piece and leaving well alone. But more of that later.
We can also see clouds in the mirror-like surface of water.
When looking at still water, have you had that strange feeling you are entering into another world as if some shift has taken place and you seep into something quiet and infinite?
That’s really where this painting came from.
The horizon line is very high. At the top, a frenzy of diagonal movement sweeps across trees and the far bank suggesting we are travelling on the wind.
As our eye travels down, the painting becomes increasingly quiet.
The clouds on the surface lead our eye diagonally to the bottom right where the inky indigo water draws our eye down and down into its depths and infinity.
The knowing-when-to-stop part came about when I noticed the unsettling dynamic of above and below the horizon line.
The lack of clouds in the sky reinforces that disconcerting feeling.
Do you get that feeling too?
This image feels like a startling “through the looking glass” moment where the recognizable elements of a landscape are subverted by point of view, perspective, and placement. It draws the eye down from that dizzying horizon line to watery depths that beckon in a way that is both serene and slightly dangerous. The movement of the trees in the distance contrasting with the placid foreground of the water could imply that the viewer is flying over the scene — but what I got was a sudden vertiginous awareness of the spinning of the Earth, where the observer is at “the still point of the turning world.” The complementary palette is so striking and so befitting of this breathtaking scene. I love everything about this.
Welcome back, John! We missed you.
Hello Jo,
Thank you for your kind words and thoughts. I very much enjoyed your reading of the painting. I had placed the word ‘vertiginous’ in my post then replaced it with another. So when I read you had used it, it made me smile but it was your statement about the turning world and the viewer is at the still point that I read with great interest, and the world is spinning, how fitting and uplifting.
You have created a beautiful painting which has a fascinating and disorientating effect; the world is spinning whilst the clarity of the cloud reflections on water invites the viewer to search (or even plummet) downwards into the depths. I feel that I am on a boat, perhaps a canoe, which rapidly glides past the river banks, barely stirring the cloud reflections on the water yet blurring the vegetation of the banks. This image may have come to me because I had recently seen racing boats on the Thames and I noticed the lack of disturbance to the birds and hardly a ripple to break up the play of light on water.
Hello Chris,
Thank you for your interesting reading of the painting. It’s great that you had experienced something similar, in the stillness of water on the Thames. I agree it certainly turned out as a painting with a disorienting feel to it, which I really enjoy giving a piece an unusual edge to it
John, your beautiful painting reminds me of a poem I had written called “Sky Walking” here is an excerpt from it …”Each day my mind goes high up above the silver woven clouds where I can be alone,
To a place where no one can find me,
Tens of thousand floating steps,
soul-searching,
trying to define who I am,
Seeking perfection in its most raw humble imperfect state,
A place where I can just be ….”
The world and art have no defences they are fluid soaking into each other by nature. Your work envokes balance flow and harmony you are blessed with a wonderful gift of facilitating others experience the essence of the veil we cannot visably see. So well done John 🙂
Hello Irene,
What a wonderful title for a poem, thank you for your beautiful words. ‘A place where I can just be’ I think from your poem Irene that solitude is important to you as it is to me. There is of course a big difference between that and loneliness. As you so aptly state ‘where I can be alone’ To a place where no one can find me’.
I am gratified that my painting brought to mind the visual imagery evoked in your own work. Thank you very much