The power of storms is not in their concreteness, it is in their unified power as separate molecules. They are another scale of the atoms which we are made of, separated by distances relative to their size. They are the opposite of mountains. We cannot cut them down or alter them to suit our needs. We are powerless in the face of such energy and force, which comes at us in the form of intangibles, of minute particles, of whipping wind and rain that cannot be harnessed, cannot be grasped, cannot be delineated. It is this that makes them elusive and exquisite. We can do nothing to the storm. If anything our fucking with nature and global warming has only made the weather more extreme, more devastating and intense. And we still won’t be able to find the edge, to hold it in our greedy grasp. Only photographs can capture a storm, and only the light and shadows. A video can capture the movement, and sound but nothing contains vapors. It is the breath of life of this planet. Water. From whence we came and whence we shall be returned. Dust to dust is a misnomer. Go molten into the ground as nutrients for plants and animals to exhale into the convection system of energy.
Power does not reside in anger as much as in beauty. The beauty of the clouds holds their power over me, the amount of energy, volume, movement and fleeting time are beautiful, not angry, not scary. As a psychological interpretation of the viewer I find painting them to be an investigation into the wonders of this place I live in called Earth. To focus on anger in storms is to project a human emotion. Storms don’t elicit such feelings in me. I find them thrilling and skin tingling. I haven’t been the recipient of their destruction. I’m not projecting on them.
I feel like making angry storms is cliché. I like the joke by Mitch Hedberg about the yeti, the idea of a blurry monster is way scarier than one with defined edges. The unknown is scary. The incomprehensible is scary, thus religion, an answer to those persistent questions. Perhaps when we die, we are an energy suck of our life that black holes to another dimension, if time and space are illusions just as the horizon is a falsity, a construct of the human eye, then so too is the multitude of explanations for where we go when we die. The enormity of the universe should almost be answer enough. I find life to be infinitely complex and simple. The duality of those two creating balance.