A Cloud Muse Rationale
May 2021
I collect clouds. Well not actual clouds, that would be close to impossible! I take pictures of clouds and then use those photos as inspiration for my paintings. Although the works are many times grounded by a landscape, there is never a doubt that the main focus in my muse, the sky. The paintings are not intended to closely represent the photographs but capture a specific time and place where I have been spiritually moved by the beauty of nature.
The origin of my fascination with clouds and skycaps is routed in my childhood. One of my favorite bedtime stories was a picture book about a young girl eagerly anticipating a visit to the circus the next day at6 sunrise. In the story, her father would take her to this magical place at dawn. The page where this occurs is a brilliant rose-colored sunrise. I have always identified with that child as I have come to believe a new morning sky is to be cherished and treasured with boundless possibilities of the day to come.
I remain overjoyed at witnessing a beautiful sunrise or unset. These transitions in time should be embraced with hopeful anticipation of the future and acceptance of the unknown. The continuous changes in light and atmosphere signify at the randomness of our world and our need to accept an unscripted lifetime.
There is an innate freedom in the nature of clouds. Their movement across the sky is sometimes so subtle that we only realize they have morphed their shapes after we have looked away and then refocused. So like in life, there are many times that we can take for granted a new day when that day is blurred with the more mundane activities of everyday routines. Periodic refocusing is necessary.
And unless you feel I am alone in my fascination, there is actually an organization called The Cloud Appreciation Society and worldwide has over 50,000 members. So rest assured, I know I have plenty of fellow sky watchers.
Creating my paintings has always been rooted in transferring my feeling of joy to the viewer. The piece of art I construct uses reference photos as only a springboard. But fragments of dreams and recollections of past experiences infuse my paintings. Meditate on the spirituality of nature and our common ground. No matter where we live or what our political or societal bearings, the sky units us all. As a muse, I can think fo no better subject on which to focus and concentrate my efforts while I am here on the earth.
Reflections on Clouds
March 2021
Clouds have been a primary focus of my skycap paintings for many years. They provide a perfect platform to draw the observer into a world where we are unsure of what is real or imagined. Sometimes my works are based actual atmospheric events but more commonly only in my mind’s eye and personal recollection. The resulting paintings can serve as a springboard for meditation and introspection.
These omnipresent and ethereal gifts of nature re dynamic, metic and captivating. Practically speaking, they are merely the intersection of air, water and light. But what an explosive collision! All elements are constantly evolving as they are buffered by the wind. Viewing a kaleidoscopic sunset is an immersive event that must be savored for its transitory core.
In our everyday lives, we tend to discuss that which is common. And the sky and clouds are part of the fabric of our routine. We must be reminded to look upward from our electronic devices and absorb the beauty. The canopy of the sky provides the omnipresent assurance that there will always be drama and change if we simply remember to lift our gaze. While a cloud is only water masquerading as a floating solid mass, it provides a canvas for our creative minds to project subjective pictures. Who among us has not delighted as a child to see an animal or castle in the clouds? Looking skyward elicits both glee and wonder and simply makes us smile.
For me, they are personal. Clouds evoke memories of a long ago past steeped in anticipation of what treasures life will hold I the future. My fascination with skycaps was rooted in early childhood. Each night my parents would read one of my favorite picture books which told the story of a father and daughter wholly”, was a riot of pink, salmon and gold. I would linger on that one glorious page where everything was possible. What fabulous adventures would unfold as I journeyed out into the world. Many years from the bedtime reading event a beautiful sky still provides me with a sense of hope and optimism.
Our relationship to the beauty of nature is personal. We may have never contemplated what emotions are elicited by absorbing the skycape. But being cloud aware can prove a needed antidote for our downward gaze and introspective focus. Raise your head and breath infinity. The sky is vibrant, changing and reminds us that we should embrace the future.
I hope my chosen subject matter provides balance and peace in your everyday life.
A Year of Turning Inward and Finding Joy
December 2020
Creating art in these disjointed and distracting days has been a challenge even for the most focused of artists. In 2020 we were all living in isolation and bombarded with the endless tick of increasing fatalities and sufferings caused by the virus. A multitude of technologies and 24/7 “Breaking News” events competed for our attention. Multi-tasking had taken on a confusing, frantic and stress inducing vibe as schedules and obligations became null and void. The isolation of the pandemic created a chasm for the noise to increase tone and volume. Do we fight or flee or simply disconnect from the outside world?
As a painter of clouds and skycaps, keeping a needed energy level sustained and attention focused is still. daily challenge. But it can also be an opportunity for one oto turn inward and begin to ask one of the most basic questions: Why do we create art? What do we hope to accomplish by s[ending the many hours and days in our personal endeavors? How do we hope this will impact the world? And I’m not talking about the standard “Artist Statement” we have all constructed. But a deeper and truer sense of purpose.
Earlier this year, I was interviewed as part of the process to become a Juried Artist in a Connecticut gallery called The Voice of Art. One of the questions the Director posed was simple and direct: Why are you an artist? It took me by surprise and made respond in real time. And in the immediacy of the reply I believe my answer reflected a motivation that had lay dormant and was obscured by the distractions and cacophony of these most difficult of times.
I paint to send joy into the world. While I love to paint and have done it throughout my lifetime, I am most satisfied when I have shared my vision with those around me. Like pebble dropped in a still pond, my work can hopefully reverberate outward. My delight at viewing that initial sunset has been captured in my painting and the same joy transmitted to the viewer. The echo of that visual engagement elicits a smile, or a thought, that the viewer carries and radiates throughout the day. If that sense of well-being can sustain someone who views my work, then I have accomplished what I have set out to do. And when are those positive feelings more needed than now?
Yes, joy is why I paint. As difficult as 2020 has been, it has provided artists with the opportunity to bring a bit of positive energy into this fractured world. A good thought to motivate and move forward into 2021 for what will continue to be a better, but still challenging, future.
Above and Beyond the Pandemic
August 2020
The first half of 2020 has certainly been full of surprises.
Little did we know a pandemic was bearing down on us in New York City when we hosted the reception for my solo show “Above and Beyond” at Pleiades Gallery. So on February 22, 2020 a hundred plus attendees crowded into our gallery sipping wine and munching on snacks. Greetings were in the form of hugs and close contact was the ritual of the afternoon.. As we mingled and laughed a crises was circulating in the air above the city.
Oh, it seems so long ago now. Almost another lifetime away. Although we were not aware at the time, it would be the last reception prior to our move from our home of 20 years and possibly the final gathering for any future shows. Although the post Covid19 world is still uncertain, all we do know is that life will be different. What will a brick and mortar gallery look like and when will the public feel comfortable venturing into one? There are no answers now on what lies beyond the pandemic.
And so we have done our best as artists to cope with uncertainty in our daily lives. After 5 months of lock down, many have used time to “keep working” and flex our creative muscles. This has resulted in a variety of coping mechanisms seen through the products of our endeavors. Some artists have produced work that exemplifies the dark and brooding time while others have sought refuge in providing hope and peace s inspiration. And these individual reactions of each artist can be cathartic and empowering as we deal with fears and frustrations of everyday ife.
Artists are said to be more perceptive and aware of the environment. So during these challenging times, we should embrace the transitory nature of the virus. We will get through this and emerge on the other side. An our work will provide a map for those who will follow inner footsteps. Yes, we have traveled this journey, and yes, it has been beyond your imagination.
End and Beginning of Another Year
January 2022
It does seem like we’ve been down this road before. But just like the sky and clouds, they are only the same to a casual observer. In reality, no two days are exactly the same but constantly changing and thoroughly. unpredictable. Dark and threatening clouds yield to sunshine while a beautiful morning may morph into a grey and dismal afternoon. So the certainty of what is ahead is unknown to all.
Artists must be open to the endless possibilities of embracing the unexpected. Thriving on change and the impact that it has on our work is paramount to staying fresh and tuned into our surroundings. So while this pandemic has tested our patience with the promises of vaccinations and cures, it has likewise provided us with a creative outlet for our works. We vacillate between the uplifting news with advances in the medical world only to be dashed with a devastating variant ravaging the city and crushing our normal life activities. But like a sun shining through those dark storm clouds, the heroics of those on the front lines provides a sense of joy. And behind the changes the inevitable wind that can be a gentle breeze or a gale force wind tossing us about.
And so transitioning from one year to another should be a time for us to select where are now and an opportunity to resolve to be our better selves for the next round. Embrace the wind, push ahead and wrap your arms around those you love. All is transitory. Beauty and peace can be found in our everyday life. Look up and relish the sky. It can teach us much about how to live our lives.
And Suddenly Spring Has Sprung
May 2022
Nature never disappoints in it’s beauty. As the seasons change, the sky becomes more brilliant and the clouds remind us that nothing lasts forever. In the blink of an eye a sunlit day becomes grey and overcast and showers pelt bystanders. And it is this non-linear and unpredictable nuance of the season that is most endearing to those who are open embracing of change. The end result of the rain is, after all, the green growth and flowering landscape that is such a welcome change from the dreary winder.
So the predictable and orchestrated evolving of our surroundings is a positive message given the state of the world today. We are still in the midst of a pandemic that will not go away and confronted by evil in the world that seems unrelenting. But these things exist as a spec in the long view of history. Spring reminds us of hope and sensitivity towards the transient nature of our surroundings. But conversely, it can also be a cautionary tale to embrace what is important in life and live each day to the fullest. This dichotomy is a balance that we need to maintain as we enter each new day and contemplate the sunrise.
Art carries a hidden message to react in the moment. Whether it’s a positive impression of what has been created or a negative one that causes the viewer to cringe or look away, it is the artist impact that is the most poignant.. As I paint clouds and skycaps, I attempt to translate my feelings and emotions onto the canvas. And so Spring brings with it an energy and heightened awareness of the abundance of beauty in the world. It is always there and we need only look up to absorb what has always been and will always be an eternal backdrop to our daily lives. We are renewed, let us rejoice and be glad.!
A Third Party Observations
I recently received an essay written by the art critic David Gibson that provides interesting insights into my work. Below is the text which will be incorporated into my solo show program later this year.
ILLUSTRATING INFINITY
THE PAINTINGS OF ANN KRAUS
Essay by David Gibson
To draw a line in the sand is to dare someone to cross it. It’s a challenge etched not only in myth but in the imagination. The earth is covered with marks drawn either intentionally or instinctively either by both men or creatures of all sorts. The notion of an invisible line demarcating the limits of a moral imperative is an inspired notion that also animates the paintings of Ann Kraus, who started as an abstract artist but who has in recent years turned to the sky as a subject. If one can imagine any landscape more marked by exception, overt to topical inspection, and yet mutable beyond comparison, it is the sky. The sky draws its own lines, which attract the creative imagination, and they are also lines to be crossed, to open ourselves to an infinite range of inspiration. Kraus provides the impetus by illustrating her own versions of this grand palette.
Clouds are eternally changeable, and their portrayal alters according to other elements interacting with their perception, such as environmental dynamics—air pressure, wind, moisture, and extremes of light or darkness. Details on the edge of the horizon—water or land—also characterize the great mass of space above it, and even if the clouds in a given scene lend it greater gravity, the scene as a whole cannot help but be affected by the composition of the scene below it. Kraus seems to be more actively challenging herself in the new work, by emphasizing scenes in which visual complexity and ambiguities indirectly portray the aggressive nature of environmental dynamics affected by Climate Change.
Kraus’s paintings have become more topically complex, as she tends to choose subjects for interpretation that portray a greater degree of expressiveness, while also depicting more extreme weather patterns. Of course, the painter is under no direct obligation to any particular set of dramatic circumstances, though overall, the choice of subject matter can characterize an artist’s thematic sympathies. Kraus is mindful that too many beautiful sunsets, for instance, may limit her active viewers, who don’t merely desire a sun-filled vista. If anything, a sky filled with clouds is one that does more than catch the eye—it brings the entire mind, including memory, into the experience of looking. Also Kraus has to take into consideration which sorts of people are viewing her paintings. The sort of person who may prefer
a more complex and possibly depressing scene is looking to get access to a certain kind of emotional energy that is needed to get through other issues in everyday life. Given the overwhelming degree of crisis that has bled into our shared experiences, any role that art can have in redressing emotional issues dormant in the mind of the viewer, allowing them to give vent to them merely by appreciating a painting, is one of the most important gifts that Kraus’s oeuvre can deliver. Not only to develop a discipline that reflects a variegated relationship to the natural world, but to use it as means of interacting with viewers in an ameliorative capacity. Violent or turgid scenes like this one possess a similar character to intentionally abstract paintings, like those by Jackson Pollock for instance, which narrate the instinctual conflicts in the mind of the artist. That Kraus may rely upon, or spin a stronger impression based upon real events as she witnesses them, makes the affinity required of it no less potent.
As a painter of nature’s effects, Kraus is dedicated to a dual context—first, to be true to her experiences, and to bring the fullness of that experience into a painterly achievement; second, to illuminate and illustrate that experience by making it also an abstract construction of the highest order. We are both transported to a moment of heightened sensory immersion, yet we can also appreciate the technical mastery that transforms a real scene into an object of aesthetic complexity. We can both find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
In Misty Low Tide Morning (2021), we look out over what looks like a wide river or a bay, with the tide quickly receding, making the water look brackish. The sky is filled with a heavy blanket of clouds, which completely blank out the horizon, and despite a large break in them directly above, where a dirty blue sky attempts to emerge, it somehow cannot. The overall scene is one of moody obscurement, in which a dramatic elemental narrative feels strangely opaque.
Tranquility (2020) presents a large sky half-covered in swirling white clouds. The tranquil aspect on hand is the blue sky background that permeates and frames the clouds. Such an open perspective is proof of a developing consciousness that begins to see ameliorative qualities in an area defined by elemental activity unaffected by the iniquities if human agenda. Like watching tides or winds blowing in upper branches of treetops, the moisture currents and the diaphanous forms they alternately process and dissolve are an intimate manifestation of emotional currents which, similarly unverbalized, define who we are as human beings.
If there’s anything that skies impress upon an extended viewer, it’s the concepts of time and immensity. “Long Journey at Dawn” (2020) presents a scene in which the earliest moments of liminal consciousness and the evidence of its illumination are by turns calming and transcendent. The light that blasts out from a single point in front of the viewer makes itself known in a cornucopia of hues and tangents. We don’t see it yet, but dawn will obliterate the darkness that only minutes before still reigned supreme. What Kraus makes us see is the day taking shape, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. These silent fireworks are a reflection of all that’s seen and otherwise sensed in the world of daylight. Very few moments will ever feel like this one.
“Three Golden Clouds” (2021) presents another scene that could only happen in the sky, where neighboring clouds take on disparate moods, dictated by a slight separation or infinitesimal tangent of two fleeting cloud forms. The larger cloud is ominous and dark, as if it carried within it some primaeval force, summoning storm-clouds or withholding the fullness of night. Perched nimbly, like some golden bird, is one cloud, while in both the middle distance and far horizon there reflects a similar golden color. The golden cloud in the foreground is like a thicket of luminescence, and one can imagine all the life that thrives within such a dense territory. The other layers of clouds are like echoes of whatever ambience travels above the upper gray reaches, fading away and in some way, saying goodbye.
“Farmland” (2021) is an example of how Kraus merges sky with landscape, so that the viewer can be made to understand that they are never completely alien to one another. The land gives dimension and offers planar counterpoint to the effusive forms swirling above it. Farms themselves create a humanistic narrative connecting history and society to what would otherwise be another vertical perspective. The sky in this case is populated with both light gray and dark clouds, but in an action that describes a low lying storm system moving over the land with seeming malevolence, while the upper reaches calmly frame the approaching dusk. The last hues of translucent daylight are fading behind these clouds. The land remains, golden and constant below it.
Nature may have its seasons but the sky is eternal, always presenting gradients of a horizon that is the last line we can never cross. Ann Kraus’s paintings dramatize the natural world in dimensions that we can take in, allowing us to be challenged by the complexity of existence.
January 2023
As another year rolls into focus, I am reminded of the relentless passage of time. While our daily activities distract us from recognizing this simple fact of life, it is nonetheless an unavoidable truth. We occupy reality for only a limited period and must make the most of those previous moments.
The end of 2022 was punctuated by my solo show Canticle of Clouds at Pleiades Gallery in NYC. Although attendance still is low due to a resurgence of concern of the pandemic, it was a wonderful experience. Among the visitors was a couple where one was color blind except for the color blue. They sat enraptured with all of various shades of blue that can be found in my sky paintings. A common question of visitors was concerning the location of the scene in the painting. And with few exceptions, the scenes are only in my mind. So while I’m inspired by a wonderful skycape with an intriguing cloud formation, I sometime mix and match the landscape below. Some viewers think a specific painting is of Long Island Sound, another visitor guesses it is from the shore of one of the Great Lakes. So in their mind’s eye, they are relating the painting to their own person experiences. And that is quite satisfying for an artist to hear.
What will 2023 bring? I will be concentrating on painting from recollections and sketches resulting from my recent travels to Ireland and Scotland. It is heaven to sky watchers and I am excited to share my recollections with my website viewers. And so, I will be committed to make the most of my time during this coming year in capturing the enduring infinity of the sky above us and the precious land below. Because in the blink of an eye, life will change yet again.
January 2024
A new year begins and we gaze at the upcoming year of fresh beginnings and opportunities. But first a quick look backward to the past year and understanding and reflecting on what we have learned during those quick twelve months. Life and artistic pursuits shifted into full gear with a return to the “new normal” post pandemic. Travel, gatherings with friends and family have produced great joy and pleasure. Obviously, you appreciate those things that were taken for granted. And this includes those who we lost during the past year and will continue to hold dear in our hearts.
But the eternal sky and cloud actors continue even when there are changes here on our earthly realm. This is reassuring as we gaze upward and catch a glimpse of what is a constant in our existence. Beautiful sunsets and sunrises emphasizing the continuing evolving of our spiritual existence is the reassurance we require to face the future with a sense of awe and optimism.