Painting with Light

Painting with Light

This practice was born on a winter morning when I realized that the only way I could record the beauty of the winter light was to use a camera to paint with it. Part of the inquiry in this practice came from wanting to use the lens of the camera like a paintbrush, following the edges of light rather than some other compositional imperative. Restricted only to the viewfinder of the camera, this constraint became the opportunity, which is something that often happens in creativity when we are working with limitations. Afterwards, I remembered a beautiful book my mother, a painter, showed me when I was young called Pintando Con Luz, by William Lesch. That was a bit different–he was using artificial light in still photography, but it was painterly in its own way, and the way he illuminated gardens and plants at night was astounding. Of all painting, oil painting seems to be the most direclty about light on form. Yet to apply this lens of a painterly approach, to explore light on form through the medium of video, and more importantly to try to share with you the beauty of the morning-that is what inspired this practice.

What I noticed about it as a practice was the way that allowing the camera to become my eye, my view on the world, while looking at something of beauty, and allowing it to be drawn where it wished, was both meditative and liberating. Even as the focus shifted, and the image sometimes blurred, because I was looking at it through simply a visual and not an interpretive lens, it was the beauty of the light that came through. As an artistic mode, requires only the phone that is already likely in your pocket. Interestingly, when this piece was produced, the beauty of the light really hadn't made it onto the film. After several similar attempts, we arrived at the light painting filmed above at Stinson Beach in August 2021.