After seeing the documentary film Fire Of Love at the cinema I discovered that Katia and Maurice Krafft answered a few of my own questions on my fascination with volcanoes and other wild extremes of nature.
Why am I drawn to catastrophic weather events?
The film started me thinking and tracing back.
As a child I loved to watch thunder storms as did my older sister. Sometimes we’d wake in the night to a storm, get up and watch it from the bedroom window, counting the seconds from each lightening strike which we believed equaled the amount of miles away we were from the centre of the storm. I loved to watch thunderous rain, the ever increasing leaps of heavy drops into puddles. The same with blizzards, howling wind, anything chaotic. The storm of ’87. Then in my mid twenties I saw a tornado rip the landscape in front of me on the Acle Straight, a Roman road which cuts across the flattest fields of Norfolk. It was a sight to behold, which traumatised my kids however who were in the back of the car.
There is something about the extreme power of nature versus my powerlessness which connects. It puts us into perspective, our lives are ‘just a blip’ in comparison, as Maurice said. It makes our human existence seem insignificant or maybe it just reaffirms my own feeling of insignificance growing up as a child. Deep huh.
When I witness these weather activities I feel them deeply, which translates in my mind as a mix of fear and excitement, awe, love, I brim with tears and am left with an energy which I act out with paint. I am compelled to do it it has to be expressed. It makes me feel alive.
Katia and Maurice have inspired me, I’m off to find some examples of their work and get painting.