2013 – Ongoing

The inspiration for the Mystic Light series was a pencil drawing by Tomoharu Murakami depicting the outline of a tall rectangular form on a slight base; the darker edges of the rectangle gradually fade to the off-white of the paper base. The drawing is extraordinarily subtle – virtually impossible to see without proper light – and extremely beautiful. It made me wonder if any geometric form could be rendered magical solely through the creation of a certain quality of light. I specify “geometric” because I believe, as did the first generation of abstract painters at the turn of the 20th century, that basic geometric forms – squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles – can be seen as symbols of universal truths and thus contain latent qualities of a spiritual nature. Working with a scrim of translucent white fabric, I tried to create a subtle but intense shimmer of light: the rectangular or circular forms are out of focus and dematerialized, yet seem to vibrate internally – and it is this sense of vibration that, in Kandinsky’s words, “shapes the work.”