5 minutes 27 seconds

Philippa Bentley

acrylic on birch ply prepared panel

200 x 995 x 20mm

The Cloud Paintings  -  Constant Change

A reflection on impermanence, ephemerality. 

The sky is reassuringly constant yet ever changing- a beautiful paradox, and reminder that we are fleeting, small in the face of grand natural rhythms and beneath a vast and  'indifferent sky'.

The paintings are composed as snapshots of dissipating clouds,  capturing moments in time.

The sky is vast, eternal and reassuringly constant.

It is beyond human- something larger than us.

It is there today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow.

If life is feeling overwhelming  -look up. It puts everything mortal and worldly in to perspective.

The sky, this ocular phenomenon- the perception of light in the atmosphere- has a beauty that is uplifting and inspiring.

And clouds - accumulations of water vapour  - roll across that sky forming, shape shifting, dissipating, disappearing, catching light or shadow, in endless variety.

And this is the beautiful paradox of the sky- it is constant yet ever changing.

It will never look exactly the same twice.

I find it’s steadfast constancy comforting. I get a similar feeling out on the ocean, especially if no land is visible. Or in the midst of a beautiful desert-scape extending to the horizon. In the mountains? Deep in green bush? Watching wild weather blow in across the estuary and fade away. Watching tides breathe in and breathe out.

It is tapping in to a sense of the almost imaginable, unfathomable grand scale of existence, grand natural rhythms over which we have no control but are, somehow, part of- just by being alive. How amazing is that.

It makes me feel simultaneously small – a wee fleeting thing- and elemental, alive, inextricably interconnected to the whole.

”To a superstitious type, clouds can be augurs – but even for the sceptic, they are natural monuments by which man’s insignificance might be measured.”E Moffitt.

It is this impermanence, ephemerality of our being that I aim to capture in this series of paintings, where the sky functions as both physical and philosophical space.

The paintings are composed as snapshots of dissipating clouds. I employ temporal sequencing, read left to right, of the cloud as it dissolves over time.

My process : I video a cloud and watch it transform- such a calming, lovely thing to do. I then take screenshots at various points of my video, choose and order up to five of these images and then paint the story of this process. Capturing moments in time; documenting impermanence. Another paradox, perhaps.

The titles of each painting record how long this process took.   ‘2 minutes, 37 seconds’; ‘1 minute, 27 seconds’; ‘6 minutes, 14 seconds’. Time is passing. And there is an unstoppable change over time- a mere few minutes from white cloud to no trace.

It happens, whether you like it or not. The sky, indifferent, keeps on being the sky.

And so we are back to grand natural rhythms and a metaphor for the fleeting, ever changing nature of life/being.

In this way my cloud paintings become a sort of ‘memento mori’. This Latin phrase translates as ‘remember you must die’ and addresses the inherent ephemerality of life because of the inevitability of death. But please read this in a positive way, as was intended in Roman usage. The Stoics used ‘memento mori’ as a tool to appreciate and invigorate life, to create priority and meaning, to focus on what truly matters and not waste time on the trivial and vain. “Memento mori, memento vivere” or ‘remember you die so remember to live’.

And of course these deceptively simple, beautiful paintings are ultimately open to your own understanding, deciphering and enjoyment. A narrative for each viewer to read and make sense of.

Look up.

Philippa Bentley.