Arrangements in gray, white and blue

03/20/12, 9 am, looking north

03/21/12, 10 am, looking east

03/22/12, 10 am, looking northeast

With warm daytime temperatures and cooling nights, we've had fog several mornings in a row. The first days of spring have been in soft focus. The thick early fog has lingered until late morning each day creating soft, muted blue skies with low diaphanous gray and white clouds. A couple of nights we've had brief thunderstorms with only a small amount of rain.


What causes the fog, you may ask? For the past few nights we've had moist air condensing after a warm day. The condensation mixes in the air and forms a low stratus cloud next to the earth. As the day warms in the morning, the moisture evaporates and the fog burns off.


These soft-focus cloudscapes are really abstract paintings. Like Whistler's "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1" known more popularly as Whistler's Mother since she is the model.  When this painting was exhibited it was considered abstract (although that word was not used) due to the flatness of the space, geometric shapes and muted palette. Whistler made some wonderful paintings of London. A lovely, foggy one is "Grey and Silver: The Thames".