Julie Battisti

My interest in painting clouds began as a form of escapism. They’re part of the landscape that can seem so impossible to touch and capture in some ways yet so incredibly easy to watch as they pass by. The process of painting clouds was a way for me to capture a tiny moment in time of an ever evolving form.
In a lot of ways these Cloudscapes are a study of light and texture. The luminosity and lightfastness of oil paints allow me to experiment with compositions of varied depths. I have tried to create both a sense of depth with glazes of blues and greens in some areas and also pushing the foreground forward with layers of opaque white. I also see these works as a way of bringing the outside in. I have wanted to capture the vivid blues of the bright blue sky that happen just after dusk or before dawn.
I see this work as an extention of my previous work, even though the subject matter is quite different. For the last 5 years I have painted large scale floral paintings that also experimented with texture and light. These floral works were a unnatural inflated view of these beautiful small things, whereas my cloudscapes I am trying to fit these impossibly big things onto a canvas.