Softly Lit Veils, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Exhibiting: Breckenridge Gallery, CO, $6650 framed
 
Growing up in Houston, TX. with abundant trees on every block, I didn’t really experience broad horizons until I moved to Colorado many years ago. Along with the expansive sunsets and mountain ranges was the wonderful phenomena of seeing rain emerging from the clouds and coming to the ground in veils. When the rain doesn’t make it to the ground, it’s called a virga.
 
That’s when delicate sheets of rain fall from a cloud and the water evaporates before hitting the ground. In the western, dryer climate it happens quite often, although virgas have been named one of the world's rarest cloud formations by The Weather Channel.
 
I am entranced by that vision and felt compelled to paint them. In this oil, the downward rain is backlit by a late afternoon sun, give me ample opportunity to use those warm colors against the incoming, darker weather.
 
The painting is juxtaposition of masses: the heavy land, background clouds and the moisture laden cloud as an opposite to the delicate curtain of brightly lit rain.
 
As the painting progressed, I added more light – behind the rain cloud and exaggerating the effect even more with the rain falling into the glowing marshes.
 
One of my favorite artists, Nicolas de Staël said, "The pictorial space is a wall but all the birds of the world freely fly through it at different depths." There is a vast and intriguing space for the birds here.