Laura McCullough How Artists See Weather Blue is arguable at best, the realm of blues being broad and wide and fights happen between the land of cerulean and that of cobalt; ain't it all just blue? No one would argue that reductively, but the class divide is jagged twixt those who call for sea foam or for cyan. How about orchid rather than purple? The sky presses down on the painter with no less grief, the wand waved overhead collecting low pressure particles is flicked across the canvas: there is carnage in Geurnica which is not about weather, but does depict a storm; and Van Gogh's sunshine eats the earth and is infused in each brush stroke the way sun is infused in wheat: the bread we eat is full of it. Think of eating Van Gogh crustinis or Picasso pâté; would we ingest their eyes, what came through their fingers? Is blue enough for you? Some days it is for me, and others, I want the ochre madness damping down my soulless day, proof of what I am, mad and kind, a horse's face inside my own, or else the sower of the sun arguing for nothing, just, yes, yes, this is blue, and so is this, and this, all in my arms a collusion of ungrown things waiting to be tossed into the air. |