John Brosio

This tornado painting is about 6 feet tall. And what made it work I think is that the width and height of the funnel cloud became about the same size as another person. I wasn’t aware of it at the time and this thing was tall, fat, thin, short – everything before it came to be what it is. Only later did I realize that it was like standing in front of another presence. Of course you only get that effect in person but it was particularly spooky – in a good way.

I will say though that this twister too is very anatomically “correct” as to where things are. Those clouds at the top are often quite like that and they are a very important “bracketing” device for this otherwise vertical consideration. And they were a bitch to do – maybe the hardest thing about this piece. But do notice that everything is pretty much a horizontal offset to the black shape – that was very deliberate.

A little piece too that came in later was the bit of blue sky on the left. Things were not working until that happened.