At designer Pamela Hovland’s instagram, we were stunned by this image of a wall of “cloud studies”.  To learn more about them, we googled her hashtags — #Kode #Bergen #johanchristiandahl — to discover Johan Christian Dahl, one of Norway’s greatest landscape painters. The Kode Art Museum and Composer Homes in Norway has a cluster of 35 clouds —”skystudie”.

There is something very moving about Dahl’s cloud studies: the careful noticing, and working to translate the ephemeral material he saw onto canvases, each one unique.

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He is not alone in his enchantment. We are reminded of artist Wendy Mark’s ethereal, modern 89 Clouds done in collaboration of poet Mark Strand.  And of the Cloud Appreciation Society, whose manifesto reads, in part:

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that they are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of a person’s countenance.

We believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.

 

As we go about our day, we will take a moment here and there and LOOK.

 

Thanks again Pamela.