ECHOES
Studies on the cycles of light

"The light I behold is without place; yet it is infinitely more dazzling than a mist through which the sun breaks. This light annihilates for me all height and length and breadth; for me, this light is called the shadow of the living light. "

This new series of paintings explores the complexity of light and space. The varied qualities of light are complex and layered and are like visual echoes, vibrating particles carrying energy like a wave moving from place to place-exploring atmospheres, reflections, mirrors, screens and veils. The light and atmosphere is both descriptive and suggestive as it plays and shifts across the surface and deep within translucent layers of paint. The light sweeps across the surface, it also sits calmly and glows beneath and behind and through voids.

These shifts and changes of state suggest a place or interval between our physical and spiritual realities, manifesting interplay between our inner conditions and the physical world. This is to me a spiritual-material interval, which is reminiscent of, interconnections in the natural-physical world, which reflect nature’s constant transformations like an echo from one condition to another, both visible and invisible. It is in this "in-between" space that we can begin to explore the tranquility and drama of nature and its changeless moods, shifting of night to day, the changes of seasons, movement and stillness, land and sky, water and land, water and sky. In painting, as in all forms of communication, often the greatest meaning occurs in the interval between what is ‘invented’ and what is ‘invited’, what comes from memory and what is observed.

The material character of the paint is intended as subject matter and content in and of itself. The translucency of water is expressed through many layers of opaque and translucent paint, creating tension between the plastic physicality of the paint and its evoking of a sense of water and light. The undercurrent of line throughout many of the paintings suggests the horizon, creating tension and movement acting to both separate and unite. The colors and textures chosen often reflect weather patterns: a dramatic storm or a calm breeze on the horizon. Whether a lull before the storm or the storm itself is suggested, both light and color play a formal role in the paintings. Opposing or differing associations are explored through the juxtaposition of – light and dark, water and sky, motion and stillness, liquid and frozen, the translucent and the hidden, warm and cool, calm and tumultuous. The content of these paintings is not overt; it is neither landscape nor representative of a specific place, but rather a complex layering of the physical, spiritual, material, emotional and the intellectual.

The outer physical world and its varied characteristics and their complex inter-connectedness are questioned with an inner eye. They are both literal and suggestive, exploring the illusive and the real, dream and memory. I believe in all things of beauty, the concrete and ambiguous occur simultaneously in time and space. This equipoise creates struggle and tension. This struggle is my search, a positive force, requiring me to submit to the intuitive, be detached, and allow inspiration to connect with knowledge and experience.

Sasha Rogers
October 2002

1.St. Hildegard from The Architecture of Truth by Lucien Herve (PHAIDON) p.124