How Can Experiences of Light be Apprehended in Painting?

This practice-based research investigates the relationship between making paintings and the phenomenological experience of light. Two such encounters with light- natural light as recorded on a rural residency at the Sidney Nolan Trust in September 2016, and the cinematic light presented in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s La Double Vie de Veronique were examined and compared through a body of paintings and prints. The study of the two encounters revealed a flux in relation to the stillness of painting, leading to the adoption of using stilled imagery incorporated in a system of painting. Philosophical enquiry from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Nigel Wentworth, and biographical information from Krzysztof Kieslowski is introduced to aid reflection of the painting process. Through construction of a variety of different painted surfaces- a group made in relation to an experience of natural light and another suite made in response to cinematic light, specific agencies of light were identified and examined. By apprehending light in particular positions in relation to painting surfaces, the practice speculated on the role of the objecthood and agency of light in a phenomenological encounter with it.