Rebekah Curtis

Today I taught my son about clouds. In this paused world, it seemed a useful life skill to take notice of the ever-changing backdrop that is the sky.

Clouds are landscapes in motion. They can alter one’s mood, inspire creativity, nurture mindfulness and foretell weather patterns. Yet they escape our notice daily.

In the U.K. we now must stay home. While my partner, an EMT, is out in his ambulance, I am now Mum School. So I dug out nature books and duly bored my son with diagrams and facts about cirrus clouds and cumulonimbus till he begged me to let him get to the part where he could paint a thunderstorm. I passed him yellow paint for the lightning.

“Lightning is purple,” he corrected me. Good point. In fact, the sky is full of an extraordinary array of colours. It’s a wonder any of us yearn to travel at all when that vast ocean of sky brings us mountain ranges of bright, puffy clouds. Not to mention thick grey soups of mist, fat raindrops, stars, rainbows, moonlight and cloud formations of every shape. If we truly looked we’d never get bored. The landscapes come to us.

The sky is a source of wonder. A rich material for the eye to plunder. My son asked me recently what a cloud feels like.

“What do you think it feels like?” I asked.

“Like the softest thing ever,” he said.

Below are some of my photos of clouds. For more scribbles and photos, find me on Instagram at rebekahcurtisart.