Seeing What Isn't There
First Place, Visions exhibit, Gallery Unicorn, September 2016.
This plein air painting was done on a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Early one morning I went out looking for a subject and was struck by the light and shadows in the interior of a barn, particularly the nebulous, pale, somewhat mysterious light reflected from the back wall of the barn. On impulse, I represented this rather odd void with a single stroke of white. Kasimir Malevitch, in his painting White on White, reportedly used white to represent infinity, God, a transcendent state. What we can see in the visible world is only part of all that exists, and it is difficult to know how to represent what “isn’t there” or isn’t easily available to our limited senses. This painting combines for me what is perceived through our eyes, and also what can’t be seen by ordinary vision.
This plein air painting was done on a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Early one morning I went out looking for a subject and was struck by the light and shadows in the interior of a barn, particularly the nebulous, pale, somewhat mysterious light reflected from the back wall of the barn. On impulse, I represented this rather odd void with a single stroke of white. Kasimir Malevitch, in his painting White on White, reportedly used white to represent infinity, God, a transcendent state. What we can see in the visible world is only part of all that exists, and it is difficult to know how to represent what “isn’t there” or isn’t easily available to our limited senses. This painting combines for me what is perceived through our eyes, and also what can’t be seen by ordinary vision.