EPIC SKY

Johannesburg is an electric city, beneath a spectacular and inspiring sky which delivers intense light, surreal colours, electric storms which illuminate like fireworks shows in towering cumulonimbus cloud formations so big jumbos have to fly around them.

My studio sits on top of a ridge, with views out through big windows over the city and the huge sky above it. I’ve been drawing, photographing and sketching the skies I see for years.

The sky reflects an emotional experience of living in this city for me. It represents hope and optimism, for a developing city with serious challenges, of grandeur (a flashy wealthy city with a great skyline), of grit, gold and wonder.

The 2005 exhibition “Epic Sky” was a turning point for me, my first major solo show around a specific theme, with works of scale. Paintings of the sky lend themselves to scale, to allow the viewer to be immersed in the canvas, standing at a point where the borders of the canvas are beyond the boundaries the eye can discern.

The subject of skies continued to prove challenging, and work emerged in the show “2” in Cape Town with Kevin Collins in December 2006.

Writer Anthony Ehlers commented, “Tidy idealisation is eschewed in favour of spontaneous emotional intensity. These painting inspire a freedom for the viewer as each presents the raw, unprocessed beauty of nature. Epic is the right word here. Each skyscape comes alive with Delaney’s vivid combination of colour, texture and dramatic light.”