A few years ago a friend and I were talking about the movie The Truman Show and its controlled bubbled atmosphere when he mentioned how a cloudless, pristine sky often gave him a mild case of the heebie-jeebies.
I'm with you, brother. And I have a few ideas as to why that is. It could be partly a light and color thing. Everything seems to become super-saturated under those conditions, like those surreal kodachrome snapshots of the '60's. Couple this with the absolute stillness that usually accompanies those days and, well, the overall effect can be disconcerting. But it might be a throw back to the prehistoric when we needed to keep a low profile. A 'find-and-stay-near-cover' thing or else get nailed by a saber toothed tiger or some giant flying thing swooping down out of the blue-- literally. On some primal level, an open sky may be akin to a lack of cover. It is exposure and vulnerability.
Call us kooky. I am sure we are in a minority. But on a side note, his revelation was remarkable in that it was a new insight into a friend I had known a long time. One of many examples I have collected that we have more in common with our friends than we even realize; that we are indeed all broadcasting subtle idiosyncrasies from some internal transmitter that only those on the same frequency can subconsciously pick up on and gravitate to.
To cite another movie example, I remember my annoyance with Tim Burton's
Sleepy Hollow, all fog and gloom and inclement weather. Not a ray of sunshine in the whole flick. I thought Mr. Burton had missed an opportunity because, well, a stellar autumn day in New England can be pretty friggin' creepy. To his credit, however, he seemed to master the super-saturated sense of foreboding of which I speak in his suburban neighborhood of Edward Scissorhands.
We had this conversation on the back deck of a house on Barnegat Bay where a magnificent waterscape with no vertical interference offered up 180 degrees of atmospheric fun-stuff. I am sure it was precisely the scenery that got us on the subject in the first place, and this I painted.
So I am hard pressed to think of any painting I have done that doesn't have SOMETHING happening in the sky. Apparently I am a cloud guy. Joni Mitchell puts it nicely in her song Both Sides Now: 'Rows and flows of Angel hair/and ice cream castles in the air/ and feathered canyons everywhere/I've looked at clouds that way...'
And yet, plenty of my photographs feature "the pristine sky". I love framing a subject up against a monochrome backdrop. A little odd to realize that I started taking pictures as a reference for possible future paintings, but I've discovered recently that they are two very different things. A photograph is what it is. If I base a painting on one, I inevitably change things. The sky especially.
This writing, however, has inspired me to try something new. One of the paintings I have lined up in my mental queue is a large work of a single abandoned house. (Down at Sandy Hook, which I wrote about last week). But instead of the sweeping turmoil I had in mind for the backdrop, I'm going to try a perfect azure blue. It'll be cool. And creepy.
Photos:
1. Paul Jacks, "Lake Clouds-Yellow", 2016.
2. Return after 3 weeks vacation, Great Falls, MO 27 June 1964. Shorpy. from the Codex 99 Blog.
3. The neighborhood of "Edward Scissorhands". Boredpanda.
4. Paul Jacks, "Barnegat Bay", 10" X 20", acrylic on canvas, October 2014.
5. Paul Jacks, "North Field", 4" X 12", acrylic on canvas, January 2017.
6. Paul Jacks, "Columns II" (Storm King Mountain).
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