Prairie Dust Storm

Prairie Dust Storm

8 x 8"

oil on cradled panel

© Nicki Ault, 2018

available at Darrell Bell Gallery

This one was a fun experiment. It started as one thing and then, as I painted, it became something completely different.

I began underpainting a landscape scene with Burnt Umber and as it developed there was an energy about it that I absolutely loved. I hesitated to continue and yet, I knew it looked incomplete and, well, still like an underpainting, however I no longer wanted it to be a canola field under a cloudy sky.

I recalled a conversation I had with a dear friend who thought it would be cool if I tried to paint the wind. She definitely presented me with a challenge and immediately visions of Tom Thomson's "The West Wind" and Fred Varley's "Stormy Weather, Georgian Bay" danced in my head. However, I am on the prairies, and while there is no shortage of wind here, I remember wondering how I would express the idea of wind from a prairie perspective.... and without painting close-ups of bent and blowing wheat stocks.

As I looked at my Burnt Umber underpainting and the challenge of painting wind resurfaced in my mind, I realized I had in front of me the makings of a prairie dust storm! I moved forward adding more opaque pigments and building values, but keeping the overall palette quite monochromatic. Prairie dust storms are brown and dark... and windy!

It was really quite an exciting process for such a small painting. For those who don't paint or create, it is perhaps a little difficult to describe the adrenaline rush that can happen in those moments of revelation, but it definitely does. And as someone who has bungy jumped, I will take painting over that kind of rush any day!