A WORLD OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

Jul 10, 2025

On a green steel girder under a highway overpass, a young woman in yellow tank top and denim shorts lounges in the sunlight, laying on her stomach with chin resting on the back of her hand and elbows propped on metal reinforced with huge rivets. Playfully she kicks up her feet behind her as she glances out at gray cloudy skies. Indirect light shines through a break in the distant clouds. A dodo ventures toward the edge of the structural support, which is painted in a flaking triangle of caution yellow. At the very end, an apple dangles on a string in the open air. A pale yellow of streak of sunset lines the bottom of the panel but so high up, no ground is in sight. — A WORLD OF LIGHT AND SHADOW (2011), Acrylic on Gessoboard - 20” x 40”

I’m as surprised as the next person when some of these ideas come to me and tell me that they need to be painted, especially the ones that come in my dreams. I don’t know where they come from, but they feel important.

LEFT: Work-in-progress photo of A WORLD OF LIGHT AND SHADOW on the artist's drafting table. The structure has been painted but the figures are absent. Three pairs of reading glasses sit off to the side. RIGHT: Figure detail from A WORLD OF LIGHT AND SHADOW featuring a young woman lying belly down in the sunlight at the edge of a steel girder sticking out from a highway underpass. A dodo bird ventures toward the edge of the structural support where an apple dangles down on a string out in the open air. — Painting in progress and figure detail from A WORLD OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

When the concept comes to me, I feel that it has to be me that paints it. Most of the time, I know what the painting is about before I do them, but I can’t say that I consciously have an idea where they come from.

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