“Clouds in the sky very much resembles the thoughts in our minds!
Both changes perpetually from one second to another!”
Mehmet Murat Ildan
Clouds to most of us seem less a scientific phenomenon, rather, a phantasmagorical wonder of nature. They are at once mesmerising and contradictory – light, airy puffs of cold moisture that weigh tons. None of us consider their incredible weight or that this tonnage hanging directly above our heads is threatening in any way.
They float above and beyond us - fleets of whipped cream or candy floss. They mesmerise us with their fleeting, ever-changing formation and, most of all, are an entity that we can all witness, given a few minutes of spare time to see their coming into being: changing, morphing, maturing, shape-shifting only to evaporate as if they had never been there at all.
Dickens’ studies of clouds naturally acknowledge past observations by the likes of John Ruskin and his considerations of the sky in general and also formations of clouds; of Turner’s ability to capture moods of atmosphere and its effects on humanity and earthly objects; the vast magnificence of Paul Henry’s clouds that frame the Irish landscape and more contemporary examples by Berndnaut Smilde the Dutch artist who creates his own clouds set within beautiful historic rooms and which must be caught in photography or film to evidence their existence at all.
These recent oil sketches on card and canvas are Dickens' method of investigating what clouds may mean to us or make us feel. The ephemeral captured in painting is seemingly impossible but something pushes the investigation to endeavour to capture the quintessence of ‘cloudness’. These are not portraits or images rendered from photographs of captured clouds using the mechanical lens, rather, attempts to re-conjure the mystery of their forms and atmospheric make-up and how we feel about these magical entities.
The approach to this body of work has taken many different methods and renderings. There is no solution or answer to this work, rather, an attempt to spend time, as one would lying on a grassy knoll on a summer’s day, and give oneself up to their unfixed, mesmerising life cycle.
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Courtesy and ©Pip Dickens and Renée Pfister 2023.
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Courtesy and ©Pip Dickens, Ben Sound Music, Tenderness: Bensound.com/royalty-free-music License code: KRI5TMCS8MDOAZHR and Renée Pfister, with the assistance of Georgia McConnell, 2023. All rights reserved.