Clare Parry

clareparry.com | @ceparry

Somewhere between beauty and anxiety, Clare Parry’s paintings address our current preoccupation with the sky. In these ethereal skyscapes, elements of fact and fantasy comingle, underscored by a sense of foreboding.

Clare Parry Artist Statement:

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.  Red sky in the morning, sailors taking warning.”   Recently, I learned the roots of this adage go back to the Bible (Matthew 16:2-3), with the following quote, “When it is evening, ye say, fair weather: for the heaven is red. And in the morning, foul weather today for the heaven is red and lowering."

As the sun travels throughout the day, rising in the East and setting in the West, the clouds and particles are illuminated.  It is during the early morning and evening, that light must pass through greater lengths of atmosphere.  As the sun rises, mid and high levels clouds are lit, warning of approaching weather systems; and as it sets in the evening if high pressure builds as a system leaves, the clouds and small particles are lit.  With high pressure, aerosols, dirt and dust concentrate in the lowest levels of the atmosphere as it is filled with sinking air.  The small particulate matter and aerosols are scattered by the sunlight that give off the reddish color. 

With the extremely high levels of particulate matter scattered in the smoke caused by the vast fires, the longer light wavelengths of red and orange overwhelm the shorter wavelength of blue.  Red, orange, pink skies, neon sun linger all day with the stale excessive heat.

With the dramatic sunsets and orange skies, there is an increasing anxiety that accompanies it.  The adage of the red sky at night no longer evokes the anticipations of the next day’s fair weather of clear blue skies and abundant sunshine, but apprehension of the increasingly hot days.    Will they bring haze and record high temperatures?  We look for ash on the windowsills and windshield.  Our throats ache and our chests tighten.  I check to ensure I have an inhaler. 

Evening red skies now warn of the beginning of a persistent heat wave, brown outs from too many ACs, asthma from the poor ground ozone levels and increased levels of nitrogen dioxide.  We check the AQI to decide if we can open our windows safely or if we should keep things shut tight and contained like a sarcophagus.   An inverse Chernobyl.  

People stand in the middle of busy streets staring at the sun and sky.  They take pictures of the sunsets, but not to capture its beauty but to document the experience.  To prove it has happened.  #Nofilter.  But what does that even mean anymore?  Will the wind pattern change?  Will a storm bring lightning in the mountains?  Will there be a new fire?  How will that storm prevent efforts to extinguish a fire? 

Before, I looked out the windows of planes, over mountains with less snow, whitening reefs and disappearing atolls.   I felt guilty about taking a flight.  Will these atolls disappear in my lifetime?  In ten years?  Did you know the great barrier reef is visible from Space?  Can the trained observer see the bleaching by plane?  The ocean has a 2-3 degrees Celsius change.  I think of my body being chronically at a low-grade fever, hovering around 99 degrees.  I think about the snow melt on the mountain caps.  It seems peering down through the clouds, the anxiety is equal to looking up.

Light-winged Smoke! Icarian bird,

Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight;

Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,

Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;

Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form

Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;

By night star-veiling, and by day

Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;

Go thou, my incense, upward from this hearth,

And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.

- -Henry David Thoreau

In early April, during the shutdown I started thinking about distress signals, specifically the red-phosphorus flares that are used in hiking, boating or with roadside breakdowns.  I was thinking of both disaster and unanswered calls of distress.  

“Let’s face it: if you ever find yourself lighting off a flare to signal distress, things have gone very, very, wrong for you.” It’s best to shoot a flare off at the day end rather than the night end and they also perform better in calm conditions.  You would want them to be visible from the air. These instructions seemed to be mocking the lack of control emergencies present.  Signally distress when everyone is also in distress also seems futile.  I imagined shooting a flare gun into the abyss, a void.  I searched for flares, but worried about fire.  A sense of foreboding. These pieces are frozen in time, not space.   The space is a void, more desolate that can be imagined, it may exist in our collective unconscious. 

There are newer pieces in the series that have been suggestive of smoke bombs (like those at gender reveal parties) and Phos-Chek, the hot pink colored fire-retardant dumping down from planes onto the forest fires and residential areas.   Smoke bombs have sparked enormous wild-fires three years in a row.  The smoke kept morphing piece to piece: red-phosphorus flare, smoke bomb, Phos-Chek, pollution, cloud, explosion.  They are all flares of distress, warnings that need to be seen.

Checklist:

1. Particulate Matter, Oil on Panel, 37" x 24", 2020

2. Untitled, Acrylic on Paper, 18” x 24”, 2020

3. Phos-Chek Flare, Gouache on Paper, 20” x 23”, 2020