16″ x 16″ x 1.75″ acrylic on canvas, ready to hang
SOLD
Once again a dot in the sky, the small craft dwarfed by the clouds, heads skywards… This is the second Icarus painting and very much a sister piece with shapes and colours that echo the first .
If you haven’t read the previous post, you can here .
This time however, the painting’s movement works in the opposite direction and diagonally.
The clouds are moving from left to top right.
The craft is heading upwards towards the sun.
This second piece gave me a chance to explore enriching the colour in the cloud forms. When the light passes through the cloud, rainbow like colours are fleetingly seen.
It’s a privilege having a studio high up above the roof tops to witness cloud formations at this time of year.
What I’ve learnt by cloud watching is how they change form or rather they lose shape and some edges stay sharp while others soften and dissolve.
This combination of soft and hard edges when applied in a painting also gives the piece movement and allows the eye to skip over the picture surface without settling or fixing on any one area.
This was part of the exploration here.
What I also realised after finishing this piece is aside from the subject matter, sub themes involuntarily re-emerge in making paintings.
Those hard and soft edges I mentioned earlier really align with many pieces I have made in the past where things are often indistinct and not fixed, such as an horizon line that drifts in and out of our perception.
I’d love to hear what you think of Icarus II.
Once again, John, I’m amazed by how you can express, in a fixed image, shifting light and forms. The clouds are in a perpetual state of dissolving and becoming. These prismatic colors, and the precise angle of the light, are in the process of moving, moment to moment. I find the trajectory of the craft, as it flies up and nearly out of frame, perhaps even more touching and mysterious than in the last painting. How lucky you are to have a bird’s-eye view of the changing sky, and how lucky we are that you share your vision of it with us.
Hello Jo
Yes, I know what you mean about the craft, as it exits stage right, it has a certain poignancy. Thank you for your thoughts on the painting, the prismatic colour range was very much in my mind as I was making it, trying to push out the colours and give the piece extra light through colour. It was great to hear you mention the dissolving and becoming, aspect Jo, as that was something I was quite pleased with, trying capture that ephemeral quality in the clouds.