This painting is called “Still Light,” which is the title of the show. I love that title because it has a three-fold meaning for me: The light is still, and there still is light in terms of the persistence of light, and as a riff on still life.
My work is largely a response to my experience of light - light is color, and color is light, so both of those things are going on. I’m also extremely sensitive to light and work almost only in natural light. I turn on the lights to see the color in different ways and am tuned in to the phenomenon of light.
This painting has an area that is glossy – I use both a matte and glossy medium. It’s reflecting the light and changes as you walk around the painting. It absorbs and reflects, and the gloss deepens and lightens the color. That’s what a gloss does because it makes you see into it and also makes the light bounce off of it.
I also have less control over that medium and it does things like this crackle phenomenon. It worked beautifully in this painting, and I love it, but often, that’s not the case, and I don’t like the way the crackle looks. But this has a weird brown color floating on top of this blue, so a warm/cool phenomenon is happening. It feels like air and brightness, and I love this painting.
