Overcast and Clearing
Capturing changes from overcast to sunshine, these paintings and photographs provide interludes that show the gloomy present dispelled by a bright future.
Layers of low and high clouds stretch over the beach and ocean in Marcia Burtt’s Break in the Weather. As the clouds thin, they reveal pale cyan and ultramarine hidden underneath that add depth and lightness to the once fully overcast sky.
The marine layer has not quite burned off in Sunday Morning, diffusing an early morning golden layer across the sky and beach.
On Michael Ferguson’s View Rock, color sparkles from the refracted light of the humid atmosphere that never quite dissipates in his Northwest landscapes.
The mountain in Randall David Tipton’s The Mountain from the Train could easily be overlooked if it were not for the title. Washes of gray barely covering the white paper hint at the mountain’s distant presence. The ombré of green to chartreuse of the trees conveys sunshine that has emerged from the patches of blue at the top of the paper.
Low-hanging clouds obscure the islands—or is it the mainland mountains?—in Bill Dewey’s Channel Clouds with Whale. A break in the clouds outside the photograph’s edge creates strips of sunlight on an ocean that looks more like sand than water.
Faded colors convey a coastal fog in Robert Abbott’s Gaviota Blue. A delicate blue blends into white clouds above the foothills. Imminent burn-off is predicted by illumination on the mountain beyond.
In reverse, blue sky emerges above the fog that blankets and blends the hills, trees, and shore in Marilee Krause’s Devereux. Bleeding colors morph from a soft foreground into hard distant edges, creating a landscape in transition from low-lying overcast to sunshine above.
Ann Lofquist’s Dry December tells the simple story of an overcast winter day. But patches of blue in the upper corners expand the composition and the narrative beyond the edges of the painting.
Bright patches of yellow sunshine on a path guide the viewer to a day at the beach in Patricia Doyle’s Public Access. Gray-blue haze over the ocean is broken by darts of light, predicting blues skies to come.
