Colorful Clouds

After I’ve completed a series or finished a project, I take time to begin researching and experimenting with new subjects, styles, and color palettes. If I’m lucky I happen upon something right away and am able to develop my next series of paintings. Other times, I pick up from a one-off creation that I completed in the middle of a different series and didn’t continue. I let that painting speak to me and tell me a story. Then I let that story guide me through a new body of work. 

The first draft of “Remnants” that I created.

I wasn’t as lucky when I started Remnants. I had just completed a series and I was looking for where to go next. While in my studio looking for pictures that I could take inspiration from, I settled on one I had taken while hiking in Washington State. The mist over the mountains felt so relaxing that I thought it would be a great way to start a new project. After putting down a bit of grey and white clouds on a blue background, I wasn’t convinced that this was the direction I wanted to go. An artist friend suggested that I needed to add more layers. Even though I knew she was right, I also knew that it would no longer look like mist. I wasn’t ready to continue. I was afraid to continue. So I left it alone and moved onto another series. I wouldn’t revisit it again for a long time. 

©August 2018, Francesca Bandino, Sun in the Storm. Acrylic on Canvas, 40x40x1.5 inches, $1,060.00

In July 2018 I traveled to Virginia. The environment was very different from what I was accustomed to. In my many attempts to search for new subjects to paint, I settled on something magical - the clouds. Clouds in Virginia were large and full, they felt so close I thought I could touch them, and they had beautiful rays of color shining through. Before approaching my large 40x40 inch canvas, I did two small studies on 4x4 inch canvases. I didn’t want a repeat of my Remnants failure. To my surprise, I was happy with what I created and I had the confidence to tackle the large painting. I waved my brush across the canvas, creating colorful, rolling clouds. I could feel that Sun in the Storm would be the start of a new series. 

©August 2018, Francesca Bandino, Wind and Clouds. Acrylic on Canvas, 30x30x1.5 inches, $805.00

I took advantage of my momentum to create my next cloud painting on a 30x30 inch canvas. Clouds move quickly, so I had to start my painting from yet another picture. This one was from a road trip between New Jersey and Virginia. Each cloud became heavenly as I painted them full and weightless. An image came to me and so I added strong blue brush strokes around the clouds creating a wind-like atmosphere. Wind and Clouds became the next painting in my Clouds and Landscapes series. 

©September 2018, Francesca Bandino, Remnants. Acrylic on Canvas, 12x16 inches, $380.00

After that I was finally ready to approach Remnants once again. I needed to be true to my style of painting and the grey mist was too dull. Instead, I added layers upon colorful layers, creating fluffy orange and peach-colored clouds, each fitting like a puzzle piece into the next.

I chose to hang these paintings at the Hanover Township Town Hall for my winter 2019 solo exhibition, “Nature Reimagined: A solo exhibition of select paintings by Francesca Bandino.” Alongside them you’ll also find select paintings from Clouds and Landscapes, Apples and Temptation, and Flowers in the Garden. For each of these paintings I spotted a colorful reflection, a hidden light, or a generally muted color and intensified it to match the feelings of the day. I consider it a brighter way to view the world. After all, colors can be found in the most unlikely of places if we’re willing to see them. 

Exhibition at the Hanover Township Town Hall
From left to right: Head in the Clouds, Remnants, Mystification, Sun in the Storm, Hydrangeas in the Garden

I Think in Color

“What is your inspiration?” 

This is probably the most difficult question for me to answer. The initial thought that leads to my art isn’t ever linear. It’s more like an accumulation of what I see, what I imagine, what makes my heart beat a little faster, and what I’ve created before. However,  there is one bit of inspiration that’s at the root of my paintings — color.  

Work in progress for Protection ©2018, Francesca Bandino

Are you surprised? I imagine that once you consider my color palette, and in some cases are shocked by it, you’re probably not surprised at all. Most of us see in color with our eyes open, but I see color when my eyes are closed. I haven’t always been aware of it, but once I realized it, I was able to work through it and use it. 

Most of the time the images I see make no sense. They move too quickly and look like shots of purple bursting into the air, orange coming at me, then disappearing and turning into yellow or vanishing into black. 

The start of Open Fascination ©2018, Francesca Bandino

Other times I’ll remember a scene but I’ll remember only a few colorful items while everything else falls away. 

Maybe we all think in this way, but not everyone chooses to pay attention to these thoughts. Sometimes we only want to understand what makes sense. Yet, I choose to make sense of what I see through my work. Actually, I take that back. I don’t choose to. It’s as though my body reminds me in every instance of those flashes of color and it won’t stop until I can get it all out onto my canvas. If I can’t paint in that moment, the thought will overcome me until I can. When I finally get it out, the thought vanishes and my brush does the rest of the work.

As Dreams Merge was one of those flashes that I saw. From left to right: As Dreams Merge, An Empty City, Stay in Line. ©Francesca Bandino

When I’m working on a painting or a series, I see flashes of the painting just when I’m about to fall asleep. This happened to me when creating my Squareism pieces. I see them in different colors, full and bright, creating something that may not exist. Though sometimes I contemplate the changes I need to make to a painting, other times I see the image come and go in my mind and I know what I must do. It’s happened to me before and it has happened to me since. 

This is what it’s like to think in color.