Thundercloud Over Half-Dome

Program Notes

Thundercloud Over Half Dome, commissioned by the marvelous, kind, and joyful Tammy Wilson, is a setting of a larger letter by the photographer Ansel Adams. The letter outlines how Adams, upon seeing a “big thundercloud move down over Half Dome,” suddenly recognized the relationship between love, friendship, and art—how each inform the other, stands on the former’s shoulders. Adams describes love as “the resonance of all spiritual and physical things” which flashes “another kind of light from within;” friendship, on the other hand, is a type of love that Adams considers more passive and more about acceptance. Art, then, is the culmination of both: he describes it as “a desire to give,” something which is “both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit.” I had always found the letter very moving, and diving into it with Tammy really allowed me to paint with a big, expansive brush, mirroring Adams’ similarly vast language.