I’ve always felt rainy weather to be especially emotional. With this project, I wanted to explore the connotations and feelings of rain on me.
Typically associated with sadness, rain can also be isolating, distorting, cleansing, sensual, and liberating. In a way, rain doesn’t carry a single mood, but magnifies the senses of a moment. These works track how scenes are crushed or elevated by the presence of rain, and how rain takes on connotations by extension of those moments.
The pieces in my concentration follow a dark-to-light arc of different connotations associated with rain. The first two chronicle rain’s connection with sadness, with rain casting physical darkness and coldness over a emotional departure.
The third shows how rain can be isolating, blurring the surroundings and confining us to ourselves. The fifth and sixth pieces explore how rain might even distort ourselves, “washing away” or “messing up” our image and mood.
This alteration can be refreshing, however, and the seventh and eighth piece present rain as a cleansing re-wakening. A more vibrant palette surfaces, and the ninth piece shows rain as invigorating, full of sensuality and life.
The final piece juxtaposes rain with dance and light to assert that rain can be liberating if we embrace rather than be confined by it. The progression through connotations demonstrate how ultimately how a singular symbolic connotation of rain does not suffice the variety of moments it aggravates.
