Our Earth continues to astound me in miraculous ways every day, but it is sunsets that most ignite something inside of me. Immanuel Kant once said, “It is rather in its chaos that nature most arouses our ideas of the sublime, or in its wildest and most ruleless disarray and devastation, provided it displays magnitude and might.” In these three oil paintings of a sublime sunset in Galena, Illinois, the clouds run wild as the colors dance together across each canvas, forming a chaotic yet serene landscape. Nature’s unpredictability is what produces a wondrous sky but it is also what produces a violent sky. While it turns all kinds of purples and pinks, blues and oranges, it also turns the deepest gray to black. I admire the sublimity of our Earth but I fear dark storms invading the canvas which is why I captured this moment now, while the clouds still dance in color.
