Nerdrum’s Solidity
Eerily floating beyond, these clouds — with their atmospheric impasto and subtle and creamy solar Ochre and faint and warm terrestrial Terra Rosa edges anchoring them to the muted-blue sky — appeared more solid even than the birds and drones that flew — almost frozen in the distance — among them — especially in the low dusky light at this very moment.
When I was a boy I thought clouds like this were made of finely whipped marshmallow — so finely whipped that they could be suspended in the warm air rising from a factory behind the hazy verdant hill on the horizon that must have made them — reflecting the sun on their tops and the scorched earth below. This was something my older brother and his then-adolescent friends thought was laughably absurd.
Yet there they are again, teasing memory and pushing me deeper into my ownmost self. I wonder what my brother and his friends would say about them now?
“Nerdrum’s Solidarity (ANA20150408090443)”, 2015, 44" x 28", Don Winiecki/ANA
