Let me just take this opportunity to mention that I LOVE Autumn and Winter. This is my favorite six (or so) months out of the year.

The sky was beautiful today after yesterday's rain. Large cumulus clouds floated across the sky, ever-shifting mountains of water vapor. It always seems like everyone complains about Summer heat until the first rain, at which point they begin to complain about that instead.

Not me. I love the rain. It's cooling, cleansing, and life-giving. It washes all the pollen and pollutants out of the air. I try to make a conscious effort not to run through the rain to avoid getting wet - it's unavoidable anyway, so why not choose to enjoy it instead?

Whenever I see clouds like this, I can't help but to imagine flying through them, Superman style. That's why I wanted to be a pilot as a kid. Every time I fly in an aircraft of any kind, I'm glued to the window. The earth look so different with a vantage point thousands of feet above it. I imagine this is what climbers feel like when they reach the summit of Everest.

It's times like this that I remember that art exists whether or not humans are around to create it (or perhaps even to observe it - but that can wait for another discussion). If you think about it, most art is a representation of what has already been created in the natural world. Still life, landscape, portraiture, photography, sculpture - it's all an artist's representation of what he or she sees. Even art that comes from the artist's imagination is informed by events, places and people the artist has encountered. Abstract art is no different, by the way. The abstract artist merely expresses his or her reality in a more personally symbolic way. Everything is art. Nature is art. People and animals are art. Plants are art. Table settings are art. Trash is art.

Seriously.

Labels: Art, clouds, Photography, rain