Where the Sky Breaks — Beneath the Surface

Where the Sky Breaks began with a photograph I found online.

It was a stunning image and, although the tornado was obviously the first thing to catch my attention, I soon found myself looking at everything happening around it. There was the relationship between light and dark, the warmer land beneath the cooler storm, the movement within the tornado and grasses, and quieter areas where the light seemed to find its way through.

All of those contrasts existed within the same moment.

There is something fascinating about a tornado. It develops and gathers intensity as the storm builds, becoming more powerful as the funnel reaches towards the land. It may change direction or gather momentum, and then eventually that connection between the storm and the earth will break and the funnel will begin to dissipate.

There is no controlling it.

I think that is part of what fascinates me about extreme weather. Nature can create something capable of enormous destruction and, at exactly the same time, something extraordinarily beautiful.

I don't think one truth takes away from the other.

We are vulnerable to weather on this scale, however much control we believe we have over the world around us. Yet when I look at this painting, destruction isn't actually the first thing I see.

I notice the light.

There are strange colours within a storm and they can seem to glow in that eerie light that appears when the weather is changing. Trying to capture those relationships became one of the most challenging parts of this painting.

I needed the warmth of the field to work against the coolness of the storm, and the movement of the tornado and grasses needed quieter places around them. The darker areas also became increasingly important because of what they did to the lighter parts of the painting.

There was a point when I was working on the luminosity within the rainfall when it began to come together. The surrounding darkness made that area appear brighter.

I kept noticing it.

There is also a lighter patch of sky to the left, and neither area would have quite the same presence without the darker storm surrounding it.

That was when I began thinking about how naturally Where the Sky Breaks belonged within From the Shadows.

The darkness doesn't have to disappear for us to notice the light. Sometimes it is simply the contrast that allows us to see something differently.

The title itself is much more literal.

I think of that extraordinary point where the funnel descends from the storm and reaches the earth, temporarily joining the sky and land through this immense force of nature. At some point that connection will break, the funnel will dissipate and the landscape will change again.

When I look at the finished painting, the tornado still grabs my attention first. It is difficult for it not to.

But then my eyes begin wandering.

I notice the light within the rain, the movement through the grasses, the small line of lightning in the distance, the coolness within the storm and the warmer land beneath it.

Perhaps that is what kept me interested in the original photograph and then in the painting.

The tornado made me stop.

Everything around it made me continue looking.

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