Cloud and Veils, pastel on sanded paper, 12 5/8 x 12 5/8 inches
Exhibited: Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
 
 
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Here in Colorado, we often get to see rain falling to the ground, a sight I never get tired of. I wanted to take the idea of the rain descending and to represent it with an array of colors. 
 
The moment I began the pastel, I quickly realized that I could make this a barely-there, atmospheric piece or the rain could be rendered with more mass, but to somehow keep it all in a delicate balance.
 
This pastel is loosely done and the colors are in abundance, my first goal, but they have to support the primary idea of the piece, those veils. As it turns out, a surprising number of moves were made to set up the foreground, traverse the land, then move into and behind the falling rain. 
 
When drawing this subject a big question looms, how to make the rain suddenly appear in a believable way, to come out of something?
 
That’s a bit of a mystery to me because the solution appeared on its own and it came about at the very end.
 
There is a lot of preparation and layering behind the rain and clouds, and when the time came to work , I began to add the soft blues and teals. Then it just happened. Somehow, in those last, few marks the rain just "became' and it fell to the ground, all it its own way.
 
I became the grateful spectator.