Cloud Studies

My process is one of discovering as I go along. Over the weeks, as I was drawing, I struggled to make sense of my preoccupation with clouds. The inherent parallels between the physical thing I am drawing and the process of depiction fascinate me. I explored the similarity between the accumulation of water particles into clouds and the collection of multitudes of pencil lines into cloud- like forms. The last step was to assemble the 108 tiny particle drawings into another cloud- like composite.

Clouds are conventionally depicted as dreamy and full of mystery; landscape's "chief organ of sentiment" John Constable. Yet we are confronted with images of clouds of violence and destruction emanating from bomb explosions, machine guns and other man-made disasters, as well as volcanos and rampant fires from natural disasters. Juxtaposing these contrasting images could be a way of reconciling the poetic and the traumatic in our daily lives.