THE SHAPE OF LIGHT is the second chapter in the artist's exploration of the relationship between abstract painting and photography, through light. If THE NATURE OF LIGHT examined the ephemeral ever-changing aspect of summer light within the natural landscape, this body of work turns towards constructed geometry, investigating static artificial light within a dark winter cityscape. As with fluid organic light in her earlier series, rigid architectural light becomes material, form, and subject in this one. Seen together, the two series create an interesting visual dialogue between nature and man-made construct.
The artist once again approached the camera as she does her paintbrushes, moving through space in fluid gestures that transformed light into painterly marks. Photography thus became an act of making rather than recording while movement was a means of drawing with light itself. The colour palette was exclusively sourced from the city itself: bright white, deep red, and bright blue emerging from streetlights, construction sites, illuminated signage, and other fragments of the built environment all juxtaposed against the deep blackness of winter nights. Each image was shaped through the careful choreography of body, camera, time, and light. It enabled the artist to distort the engineered intended function of city lights and liberate them from their prescribed form and function to create unbound new abstracted possibilities.
While purely grounded in direct observation and the capture of static objects, THE SHAPE OF LIGHT departs from photography's descriptive impulse to become a medium capable of transforming perception itself. Viewers are invited to question their reliance on first impressions, recognising the limits of their perception and the importance of embracing new ways of seeing and shaping their views.