For his new series therainpaintings, Kilo Collective’s Brazilian-born artist Gustavo Sousa collects raindrops — in Paris, São Paulo and around New York, from Hell’s Kitchen to Chelsea to Park Avenue — and watercolors with them.
“We have these beautiful sculptures floating above us every day and we take little notice of them, especially in big cities like New York and London,” Sousa tells ANIMAL, who has previously redesigned Olympic rings to reflect global inequalities.
“They are constantly traveling, so I like to paint them when I’m also traveling to all these places. It’s a nice way of documenting that moment, like a weather fingerprint.” Each painted cloud is about 1.5 or 2 inches wide, so all Sousa needs is a few caught drops. And a penbrush.
“The work crosses the line between an image — which, by definition, is an artificial representation of a subject — and the subject itself. If it’s a painting of a cloud made with an actual cloud, that’s just a cloud in a different state.” How’s that for meta? See more paintings in the gallery above, at therainpaintings, and in person this Fall in New York.
