Chasing clouds: where earth meets infinity

Veils of vapour; how ideas circle until their time comes

Audio recorded outdoors, beginning and ending with sounds from today, sleet aside.

Cloud. Water as vapour, fluid and agile.

During 2018-19 I began photographing the sky, finding that grey was so much more than.

After a while the outlook became significant for the absence of clouds, not a common occurrence in these parts... A couple of weeks in I realized there was not the merest wisp, not even a contrail, and it was only later, upon their eventual return that I began to look at clouds properly. It was a good antidote to working close to the ground, was still water (vapour), and I began to enjoy and photograph the clouds per se – just grey proving to be anything but. As yet this project has not seen the light of day due to my regular pre-occupation with the river.

I even had a title for my series: An Atlas of Grey, but 2020 brought a worldwide pandemic as well as an unusually bright and prolonged blue sky as the first lockdown began here. ‘Lockdown’. The word again feels strange, awkward in the mouth and mind. My art began to reflect life: the blue, essential exercise, the new words that populated language¹.

In mid January, we suddenly had a weekend of high pressure which lifted my spirits after a challenging New Year when there seemed to be nothing to celebrate. Little did I realise then what we were about to sleepwalk into… I resolved to take a photograph and composite every blue sky day throughout 2020. This morphed into a parallel thread to take a picture of the sky each day, with or without clouds, so this meant by the time the UK entered ‘lockdown’ I already had something that I could continue by simply stepping out into the garden. Despite everything that was happening, and the unreality of it viewed from the quiet countryside, the sun still rose, and the sky was a constant and calming presence.

As so the print ever more blue came about (below). Each square represents one day in the UK’s lockdown, from 23 March to 30 April, with colour sampled from the sky above.

At the end of the month, April wrapped herself in pale grey, as if realising the shame of it all, and shed soft and silent tears. Abandoning her previously gay demeanour she discretely slipped the baton to May.

Yesterday, tidying old files, I found a related kernel of an idea written.

Look for the ‘grey’ news—the less significant headlines, which impact on our lives more directly.

If only. This now feels almost naive. Rereading it, it’s hard not to think that the world, the news, has become darker. No longer hiding in the grey. And so I find myself back to looking to the skies. A canvas that resists us, though our fingers, our carbon-rich breath, reaches here too.

I’m again looking up. In supplication? In prayer? Most of the photographs I have taken in recent weeks have been of the sky, jet-propelled by graphite, simple iPhone snaps in monochrome. In these the clouds are anchored by gravity, the darkness of the land, the load that we burden it with.

There’s a small speck, a line between 11 and 12 o’clock. I didn’t notice it at the time. I may be wrong, but I think it’s the buzzard, watching us.

Back to grey. I invest my angst, my anger, in it. And try to find beauty, and calm, amid the turbulence. Another small sketch book is filled. There’s something about the tactility of sketching with graphite dry or wet, pencil, stick or block, indoors or out, quick abstraction or something a little slower. A rhythm, a regulation of breath and thought.

It’s hard not to be seduced by clouds if you stand and watch. Time lapse exaggerates, emboldens. Smoke from muirburn mingles as if feeding the flow of clouds. The wind was unexpectedly warm and later that day I wondered if it had picked up heat as well as more carbon as it came over the hills.

I’m so glad that you enjoyed last week’s letter Let Nature's Beauty Bring You Tranquility—its words and images, my small act of resistance, the idea of rowing against the tide. I hope that this week’s one will find you well and managing to keep your head above the choppy waters. As you may have gathered, mine may well be in the clouds…

If you’ve enjoyed reading this and seeing my photography and sketches, you can leave a small tip to say ‘thank you’ here.

Until next week,

These letters are my light in the darkness, the candle I burn in the window for you. Moth to flame, the things that draw my eye and my heart. Subscribe here to receive them.

PostScript

• An aside: I read a heartbreakingly beautiful piece on Sunday by

  rebecca hooper
  . I was lost for what to say, to assuage the shame I felt on behalf of our species.

bird lung

• This time last year: on creative doubt, and ‘home’ as far more than a place to live. Are we like the weeds, rooting in the smallest crack?

The Confidence Trip

All words and images are copyright © Michela Griffith except where otherwise noted

1. A series of handmade books—The Wait, Essential, a new lexicon, uncharted waters—which can be seen in the videos on my website and a collage ‘ever more blue’.