Thoughts on Light

John Currier Glazier, Studio, Oil on Canvas, 2005

      The meaning of light as a subject, specifically natural light in a painting, implies both a sense of something that is still as well as something that changes all the time. It becomes in its conception a juxtaposition of opposites that attempts at religiosity – an intuition of the infinite in the finite and vice versa. We are familiar with visual qualities of common elements like wood, stone and water. Each treats light differently. When one perceives reflected light, that is, any light other than its source, it reveals through color much about the texture and material of what is casting the reflection. Most of what we see is reflected light. Just as it will influence our vision so will it influence other objects in it’s surroundings. Atmosphere, present mostly in landscape, can have a unifying effect on color as it scatters light from a greater surrounding. Tree branches can do the same – and water. I find interesting the tension that is created when something as material as paint attempts to imply things as immaterial as space, time, and light.