Blue Skies and Kent Harrison in Alora, Malaga, Andalucia, Spain

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies. An emotive concept. Everyone knows what a blue sky is. But could you paint one?
“I wanted to illustrate blue skies with watercolours,” Kent explained, “without simply producing a solid block of blue.”
A real challenge, when you think of it.
“There are all kinds of things going on up there,” Kent went on, “and I wanted to see if I could somehow get that across in very simple terms. I could of course have put in a single bird flying across the expanse, or a hint of a mountain top underneath it, but that would have killed the whole idea instantly.”
Portraying the essence of the sky as it appears to the human eye, Kent referred to ranges or shades of colour, intensity and angle of light and the direction of brushstrokes depicting that.
“The light in Andalucia is very bright,” he said, “so of course since I was constantly looking up into the sky I had to protect my eyes somehow, without losing the accuracy of what I saw. I wear a hat with a wide brim and sunglasses. I have to take the effect of that into account. The white paper too, when I work outside, can be very bright.”
The results are intriguing. In my opinion Kent has achieved what he set out to do very well. As you gaze at the ‘simple’ blue of his latest work, you begin to see more and more, just as you do when you look up into the sky itself. Deceptively empty, a clear blue sky can actually be very full, darker high above and gradually lighter lower down, with a wide range of other tones gently mixed in between.
“Do you think people will like them?” I asked.
“I hope so,” he said, “I am pleased with them myself. I thought that in particular people who live further north in countries like Scandinavia, where they don’t have much good weather, might like to have a picture of a blue sky in their homes, for example, it might cheer them up.”
“And what about sunrises or sunsets?” I asked. “Are you going to do some of them too?”
“No,” he said quite emphatically. “A lot of people have already done that and some have done it very well. I wanted to do something different, something that interests me a great deal.”
It is different. And I for one find it very interesting as well.
See more of Kent's work on his website http://www.kentharrison.7host.com