In the Clouds

I'm always a bit chary of sky paintings as it's so easy to do them sentimental and cliched, with over bright colours that look like those 1970s Athena foil posters. Having said that I do like trying to paint cloud formations (we don't get much cloud in the Alice and in the UK it's usually just an amorphorous grey blanket without shape or tone). And of course some of the most interesting times are when there's a bit of colour in them at sunrise or sunset.

The following three little ones have been sitting in the studio incomplete for ages. I've just started a couple of quite large new works (more on that later) and while waiting for the underpaintings to dry and give myself space from them I thought I'd go back and finish these three. They're from photos taken in a plane from Alice to Darwin (hence the beginnings of some interesting looking thundery stuff in the background). I like the odd perspective (Bean insists one of them is upside down) and the combination of jet stream like lines and fluffy stuff.

In the Clouds I: Oil on Linen (20cm x 35cm)

In the Clouds II: Oil on Linen (28Cm x 35cm)

In the Clouds III: Oil on Linen (35cm x 41cm)