In cartoons, when a character is having a bad day, or particularly depressed, he will have his own small dark cloud following him, often raining and occasionally hitting him with lightning. The more depressed he is, the more it will be just rain, while lightning often indicates an angry mood. The figures and objects in the oil paintings of Toronto based artist Yang Cao must be particularly moody. He paints fantastical still life and portraits of people with their own personal rainclouds. “I like the unpredictability of the cloud. It’s shapeless and changes all the time, it follows the wind and never stays in one form and place. Somehow I find this as a resemblance to our human nature and mind. Sometimes I wonder about the relationship between clouds and winds in comparison to people and society,” he says. The artist has always been fascinated with the range of emotions that we as a species are capable of. Many believe that our capability to feel complex emotion is the very thing that makes us special by nature. Whether it be anonymous nudes or their belongings, Cao uses emotions and gestures to connect us with eachother and that which surrounds us.
