An Examination of Light with Erica Dornbusch

My paintings for, "A Chromatic Life," portray the findings of my examination of light as a physical and metaphorical topic. I am enthralled by both Outside Light in its physical permutation (especially in nature) and The Light Inside, (any unseen source) and I aim to explore each on my large canvases. 
 
As a visually impaired artist with extreme light sensitivity, I maintain a wary association with light. While I love to gaze into it and know how it shifts what it touches; it causes me pain to do so. “What do you see?” is a question I am often asked, and I’ll seek to illustrate my response with the central piece of this series. Instead of interpolating the gap between my eyes and the viewers', I propose to let the light speak in its own voice as it occurs to my eyes and invite a deeper sense of my condition speak to others with this canvas. 
 

As painters, we create the illusion of physical light by representing it as contrast with shadow or variations in value and colour on a two dimensional surface. Mood and story are affected by the impression of implied light source; be it directional, ambient, diffuse, or reflective. Too, how the intersection between subject and shadow is described will bring complexity and meaning to a work. 
 
Painted light might also imply metaphor, unbound by its natural physical properties. Symbolically the use of light imagery might bring deeper meaning and emotion where effulgent light is used to convey spiritual illumination or knowledge. Some of my pieces will explore the threshold between these two iterations of light. ​