Shadows and Light...

Shadow Falls  24"H x 12"W  ~ sold

In painting I have chased the light but it was not until I painted shadow that I succeeded in its glow.

The natural tendency was to simply paint in tones that were lighter and lighter though it just never reached the point of glowing that I looked for or envisioned. Try as I might it just wasn't there. Did it need more white pigment? Was it a different brush or paint brand? Was it painting at a different time of day? I ran through all of the "what if" and "how to" without success. I sat in the sun, I sat in the shadow... I walked in and out of the heat and coolness. I pushed my paint around the canvas until that day the light grew out of the darkness. It was understanding that the light and shadow are most impactful when each is at full strength! The lightest light can only exist juxtaposed to the darkest dark. I had to be "all in, committed to the extremes. Application of anything less resulted in a mediocre representation of what I hoped to achieve.

Perhaps it is the extremes by which we are moved, that our eyes catch what otherwise would go  unnoticed. 

   "There is strong shadow where there is much light." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ps... I could go on philosophically and psychologically here while writing during a pandemic but I think you get the analogies...and I'm off to the studio to paint!