Rhonda Gates Paintings

March / April 2026

Clouds and Light Turning Toward Spring

Reflections on Two Paintings in Beneath Hyperion’s Sky

Last night, mammatus clouds hung low and heavy over the sky. They arrived quietly, their rounded forms swelling downward, unsettled and unresolved. The air felt charged but undecided, as if the storm was still thinking about itself. Watching them gather, I was struck by how immediately they carried me back to two paintings from my recent exhibition, Beneath Hyperion’s Sky.

This time of year often brings that kind of weather. March slipping into April. Winter still present, but loosening its grip. Light changing day by day. The sky turning expressive before the temperature follows. It’s a season where small shifts become visible, and last night’s clouds made that especially clear.

The paintings in Beneath Hyperion’s Sky grew out of extended time spent watching exactly these kinds of moments—standing still while light moves, weather gathers, and the sky changes even when nothing else does. They were never meant to describe specific places. Instead, they hold familiar experiences: clouds forming, light breaking through, the sense that something is about to happen.

Two works in particular came to mind as I watched the mammatus clouds take shape.

Mammatus Holding Its Breath centers on that suspended interval just before a storm commits. The painting lingers in the pause, when the sky feels full but restrained. Movement is present, but held back. Energy gathers quietly, without display. Last night’s clouds carried that same feeling—the sense that the sky had inhaled and hadn’t yet decided what would follow.

The Sky Raises Its Mammatus Fists approaches the same weather from a different angle. There, the forms feel more insistent, pressing upward and outward, as if the sky is beginning to respond to its own tension. Where one painting holds still, the other starts to push. Watching the clouds shift and swell overhead, I could feel that same progression unfolding in real time: anticipation tipping toward action.

Thinking about those two paintings together again, I’m reminded that they were never meant to stand alone. They exist within the same stretch of atmosphere, the same emotional weather. One holds the breath. The other releases it. Between them is a moment many of us recognize—the instant when change becomes visible, even if it hasn’t fully arrived.

Nearby in the exhibition, The Oak Tree Hailing the Rain carried that transition down to ground level. Seen as if through a rain-streaked window, the tree softens and blurs. Light and water move across its branches, which lift and dissolve as though answering what falls around them. That painting, too, feels newly present after watching last night’s sky—less an image of a tree than an image of response.

Watching the clouds gather again made it clear how these works sit within the same unfolding moment: the sky collecting itself, the storm hesitating, the land preparing to respond. The paintings don’t stop time. They allow these states to coexist, offering a way to notice how anticipation and motion share the air, if only briefly.

Although Beneath Hyperion’s Sky has now concluded, moments like last night make it clear that the work hasn’t closed. The weather continues. The light continues. The same conditions that shaped the paintings still appear overhead, unannounced, asking for attention.

For those who want to spend more time with the work, images from the exhibition are now available on my website, where the paintings continue to sit together in a different form.

Looking back, the exhibition was never about fixing a single instant. It was about allowing multiple states to exist at once—stillness and movement, anticipation and response. Watching mammatus clouds gather again reminded me why those paintings needed to exist together, even briefly: they hold space for that overlap.

Sometimes all it takes is looking up—or looking again—to feel the work reopen.

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