Directions For Sunlight

We celebrate the sun. We’ve worshipped solar deities since our beginnings. As  diurnal animals we need sunlight to work, hunt and grow food.  Our brains are sensitive to the contrast of light and dark, always turning to the light like sunflowers. The sparkle of jewelry, the flash of fire, the theatrical placement of light on a stage all attract our attention. Over centuries artists have improved their ability to suggest sunlight and to place it theatrically in a scene.  Artists learned to spot sunlight like a theater’s lighting crew. 600 years ago we were less skilled at this. The light was ambient, figures, even figures in landscapes appeared as if they were illuminated for high school yearbook portrait.

My parade of examples begins in 1430 with  work by a Flemish master (example 1). Observe the lack of unitary direction to the light and the artificially  bright figures  in the foreground. There are no pools of  directional sunlight here. Yet, within less than hundred years all that changed. DaVinci would catalyze the development of natural light in painting. Caravaggio and the Baroque period follow. Now lighting is firmly chiaroscuro (light against dark) with a clear sense of the direction of the light (example 2). Another century later in the 1600s Jacob Van Ruisdael is directing sunlight in landscapes (example 3). Ruisdael has the edges of rocks, the foam of falling water, the corner of a roof, the edge of a cloud , the surface of a meadow all collect directed sunlight. These spots of sunlight assemble themselves into a rising triangle, a singular design made out of a fallen patches of sunlight catching on strategic surfaces.

example 1. Flemish master 1430s

example  2. Caravaggio, late 1500s

example 3. Jacob Van Ruisdael, 1600s,

These lessons in plotting spots of sunlight cross the Atlantic to  Thomas Cole, the first of the Hudson River painters. In 1830 Cole  borrows English, Dutch and Italian recipes for directing sunlight as you see in example 4.  His Indians are bathed in a sunbeam just as like his cliff faces. The edges of sunlight define the design and dramatic structure of Cole’s painting.

example 4. Thomas Cole 1830s

example 4a. detail of Thomas Cole painting.

As artists moved into the 20th century they were flattening the picture plane and offering paint strokes that were as much about the appearance of the paint as they were contributors to any illusion as you see in example 5 by Wilhelm Trubner in 1905. A century later I am still negotiating the location of sunlight as I reach back in art history to Thomas Cole for  lighting design ideas which I  modify and apply with new tools on new materials ( example 6.)  I have the advantage of being able to see more art history than my predecessors. I can borrow the universal lighting of the 1400s with its disregard for unitary sunlight and place my image on a 14th century platform of 23karat gold leaf ( example 7.)  Or, I can borrow the darker palettes of  Caravaggio and J. Van Ruisdael  and spot my sunlight with a dark sense of chiaroscuro as you see in example 8.

example 5. Wilhelm Trubner 1905.

example 6. Using  spot lighting but with squeegees as well as brushes on anodized aluminum.

example 7. using omnidirectional light of the 1400s on gold leaf .

exaexample 8. dark chiaroscuro Lighting on brushed silver anodized aluminum.

Or, I can blend art these historical ideas within a 21st century urban subject. Here I apply directional lighting like Caravaggio combined with flattened paint patterns of the modernist 20th century combined with new materials like anodized aluminum and paint applied with rubber brayers(rollers), varied brushwork, and paint selectively excised with squeegees  (example 9).

example 9. Times Square with Caravaggio’s Lighting director.