Light

Meadow in June

June brings with it the longest day and we are blessed with an abundance of light. I am noticing how rapidly everything is growing on my allotment right now, including the weeds! All that golden energy is transforming into a bounty of food for our family. Light feels so fundamental to our existence. It was the first thing God created, and it remains an enduring symbol of the life that flows towards us.

I find it fascinating the way that light changes how we perceive things. It has the power to shift our mood and to redefine familiar places. I remember once walking in the rain, and as I returned home the sun broke through the clouds. The artist in me was curious enough to do the whole walk again, just to see how the sunlight caught the wet branches and created pools of glowing, glistening magic surrounded by sharp shadows. What caught my eye in that bright light was entirely different from what had drawn me before in the drizzle. The whole world seemed transformed. My linocut Forest and Ferns was inspired by a photograph I took on that walk.

I studied colour with New York artist Ben Cowan, and one of the exercises he gave me was to paint a white still life. At that time it was the hardest thing I had ever painted. Looking from one area to the next the light and colours seemed to change relative to one another. But I muddled through. In the end I found my colours, and the warm tones of the direct light looked so beautiful against the blues and purples in the shadows. There was no white left on that canvas.

Now, though I am confident with colour, I choose mostly to work mostly in black and white. It has been an exercise in stripping away, simplifying and image so that I could better understand composition. Making small pencil studies of masterworks helped me see the bones beneath the beauty: the structure, the tones and the balance. Linocuts in black and white take this further still, removing tone altogether and inviting me to convey form through texture and contrast alone. It's a delightful challenge, to capture light without using light's own language.

Light or dark.

Highlight or shadow.

Visible or obscured.

All we can see is what light gives us, and this month it gives generously.