Observe Your Thoughts Like Passing Clouds

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Announcer: This is a Getty podcast.

[Rising, meditative music]

Lilit Sadoyan:  Today we’re exploring clouds in Simon Denis’ Study of Clouds with a Sunset Near Rome, made between 1786 and 1801.

[Theme music begins]

Welcome to Our Museum Mindfulness Meditation podcast, or OMMM. Part art history and part meditation, we use works of art from the Getty collection as inspiration for mindfulness and deep reflection. Hi, I’m Lily Sadoyan. I’m a longtime meditation practitioner and museum educator at Getty. Thanks for joining me as we bring mindfulness out of the gallery and into our daily lives.

[Music stops]

Today, we’re bringing our awareness to our thoughts, inspired by a late 18th-century painting by Simon Denis, Study of Clouds with a Sunset near Rome. This episode begins with a breathing exercise to help relax your body and mind. We’ll then give a bit of history and context for the painting, and we’ll close with a thought-clouds meditation.

This series is also available as an audio podcast. If you’d like to step away from a screen for a few minutes, listen on your favorite podcast app. Now, if you’re ready, let’s jump in.

[Gong chimes]

[Slow, meditative music begins]

Go ahead and find a comfortable meditation posture, whatever that means for you today. Maybe you’re sitting or lying down, something that allows you to feel relaxed yet alert. And let’s start by taking a few deep breaths together.

In through the nose. [inhales]

Out through the mouth. [exhales]

Take a deep breath in. [inhales]

Deep breath out. [exhales]

One more inhale.

Exhale.

Now let your breathing resume its natural rhythm as we explore our work of art today.

[Bells chime]

Why have clouds captured the imaginations of people for so long? From childhood through old age, people around the world stare at the sky enraptured by unusual cloud formations. Clouds constantly transform and shape-shift.

Here one moment, gone the next. Their ever-changing shapes and forms invite wonder and daydreaming. Because they’re abstract, they can become a blank canvas for our imaginations. Clouds often symbolize freedom, or the unknown. As a kind of boundary between earth and sky, they are both tangible and intangible.

Clouds have such immense character, and that is precisely what artist Simon Joseph Alexandre Clement Denis captured in his Study of Clouds with a Sunset near Rome. Try to picture it now in your mind.

[Music continues]

The painting is one of the most luscious in the Getty’s collection. Although it is small, only about 13 and a half inches tall and 15 and a half inches wide, this almost abstract composition draws my eye when I walk into the gallery, its sense of calm and simplicity standing out among the other paintings of this period.

Denis’ painting makes clouds the protagonists. They dominate the composition, covering perhaps 98% of the paper. Trees and sketchy buildings in a narrow strip along the bottom of the scene seem dwarfed by these rolling clouds, providing a sense of scale and grandeur. It reminds me how small we are in the grand scheme of things.

As the title suggests, in this painting, a sunset lights stormy clouds. Subtle hints of pink and yellow demonstrate the artist’s sensitivity to changes in color at that time of day. The clouds appear to be moving, shifting, and swirling with the wind, ideal for Denis’ investigation of the most fugitive and elusive of natural phenomena, light, wind, and weather.

The paint texture in this work is very fresh. It almost feels wet and newly painted. The artist’s brushstrokes are thick and painterly. It was painted alla prima, which in Italian means at first attempt. That is, layers of paint were applied to already wet paint. Looking at it, I get the feeling that it was painted on the spot.

Nature is ephemeral and awe-inspiring, and Denis captures these qualities with great spontaneity and energy. We know from an inscription on the back of the paper that the painting is the 48th in a series of cloud paintings that Denis made. He would have used the small work as a way to study meteorological phenomena in preparation for bigger, more finished landscape paintings.

Denis, a Flemish artist, trained in his native city of Antwerp before moving to Paris in the 1770s, where he lived for ten years. After that, he moved to Rome, where he spent the majority of his career. Study of Clouds was done during this period. Later, he would settle in Naples and become court painter to Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples.

Although this study of clouds is evocative and emotional, it grows out of a desire to better understand clouds as a natural phenomena. While painters in the Roman countryside began focusing paintings solely on clouds as early as 1625, in the early 1700s, a more systematic approach to studying clouds took shape. By 1800, around when Denis made this study, teachers and treatises on art encouraged artists to go outside and paint, to study nature directly, and to pay attention to fleeting effects of light and atmosphere, especially clouds. Around the same time, in 1802, Luke Howard, an English meteorologist, developed the first systematic classification of clouds, defining cumulus, stratus, and cirrus, terms we still use today.

His framework also influenced artists, giving them a shared vocabulary and new ways to observe and record clouds with greater accuracy. With the globular, puffy masses that stretch from low to high in the sky, the clouds in Denis’ painting appear to be cumulonimbus. At the pinnacle of the cloud hierarchy, cumulonimbus are the largest and most potent cloud type of all. They form in the lower layers of the atmosphere and extend through all three layers, low, middle, high, right to the top of the atmosphere. In this painting, the clouds have a tempestuous tone to them. It feels as if a storm is imminent. Denis beautifully captures this interaction in the sky. Astonishing and powerful, the drama of nature is evident.

Clouds, in particular, are visible expressions of nature’s moods. As key indicators of atmospheric conditions, they demonstrate the weather, they shape our understanding of place, and they impact our mood. Clouds affect our experience of a landscape. In this painting, the forces of nature are on full display, and it’s awe-inspiring.

For me, it also evokes a sense of contemplation. These clouds, bathed in the warm hues of a sunset, serve as a reminder of the beauty of fleeting moments. The ephemeral nature of clouds makes them perfect for meditation. They serve as natural metaphors for impermanence. By observing clouds, we learn to watch our thoughts and emotions without judgment.

And with this in mind, let’s float into our mindfulness practice for this week, a thought-clouds meditation.

[Low, meditative music begins]

If you feel comfortable, close your eyes. If you would prefer to keep your eyes open, that’s okay, too. Try to lower your gaze and lower your lids to minimize visual distraction. Use this time to go inward and adopt a meditation posture that feels both relaxed yet alert.

And let’s begin with a few deep breaths in through the nose. [inhales]

Out through the mouth. [exhales]

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Inhale.

Exhale.

And just let your breathing resume its natural rhythm.

No need to force or extend the inhale or exhale. Just let your body do what it does very naturally. And begin to cultivate an awareness of your breath. Get curious about how the breath moves in and out of the body. Bring your attention to the space around your nostrils. What’s the temperature like when I breathe in and breathe out? Is it warm or cool on the inhale and exhale? What’s the texture like today?

And follow that breath down into your chest. Notice the rise and fall of your chest with each in breath and out breath.

And if you can sense into your belly too, without forcing anything here, notice how your belly inflates and deflates like a balloon.

And if your mind starts to wander here, know that that’s completely okay. The objective of meditation is never to clear or empty the mind—that’s actually a misconception. But instead it’s to cultivate an awareness of those thoughts as they arise.

Practicing a thought-clouds meditation allows us to observe and accept what’s going on in our heads. So let’s try that now.

As thoughts arise, just notice them.

Often the mind is really busy thinking about the future, worrying, planning. Other times it’s fixed on the past. And holding space for those thoughts is important in some contexts. But for now, for this present moment, let’s see if we can notice when the mind wanders.

As you sit here and thoughts arise, you can imagine that you’re attaching those thoughts to the clouds like the ones in this painting. Notice how the clouds move and shift. How fast or slow do the clouds drift by? Some clouds are shifting and moving quickly. Other clouds refuse to rush. These thoughts may be positive or negative. They may be thoughts about this exercise. These are clouds too. Let them pass.

See the space between your thoughts as gaps between the clouds. This is where we see a patch of blue sky. This is where the light shines through.

As you notice your thoughts, without judgment or a need to analyze what’s coming up for you, just notice and be the observer.

You can even imagine that you are the sky.

[Silence]

Nothing to change, nothing to control. Just notice your clouds and let them drift by.

And whenever you’re ready, if your eyes are closed, I invite you to gently open them. Gently bring your awareness back to your body. Come back to the space that you’re in.

As we return to the world, let’s carry this sense of detachment and presence with us, and I’d like to see if we can find an opportunity to notice clouds throughout our day. Pay attention to their shapes, the light on them, and how high or low they are in the sky. Notice what they remind you of, and attach thoughts that arise to these clouds. You can learn something about the nature of your mind. If there are no clouds where you are, focus on the clear blue sky itself and observe how the sky allows everything to pass through it: Sun, birds, airplanes, without being affected.

Take these opportunities as reminders to be in the present moment. Let’s return to our breath and close our practice by taking a full deep breath together, the biggest one you’ve taken today. Inhale.

Sigh it out. [exhales]

Thank you so much for joining me.

[Meditative music slowly fades out]