Jeni Bate

"I paint the skies with peace and passion, because that's the way they paint me."

Ancient Romans regarded the hour before dawn and after sunset as holy hours separate from the rest of the day; we still connect with that feeling. Most people enjoy a beautiful sunset and those that rise early enough, a beautiful dawn. Clouds are much maligned bringers of unpleasant weather but rain is a necessary part of the ecosystem and the clouds that bring them can be a beautiful composition of art. In fact, the sky is where we live – we just live there at ground level. It is the most important part of our world, the most changing, the instigator of most physical changes. And the weather is always in the news coverage. My capture of the skies and abstractions thereof aim to help us realize how small we are in the face of the sky, and yet how it unites us all.

"One of the ways I put the two sides of my creativity together is to write poetry for most of my paintings and paint it into them"