MFA Fall 2021 - The Lighthouse Keeper

Description

This series of paintings, titled 'The Lighthouse Keeper', explores imaging darkness by imaging light and the poetic metaphor of a light in the dark. Creating an illusion of illumination and a sense of light as part of the physical experience of these paintings were also core investigations in the making of this work. Informed loosely by a daydream of living a comfortable, but solitary, life in a house by the sea, I have been thinking about the difference between loneliness and solitude while creating these images of singular sources of illumination. My personal connection to these mundane objects in part drove the selection of subjects, alongside a heightened awareness of sources of light within my everyday experience - glowing lights in windows along the city streets, twinkling string lights, the moon and stars, and dancing candle flames during the darkening fall evenings. Light, for me, is both hope and a way to navigate the darkness, literal and metaphorical, and represents an enduring, signaling presence, a calling, a desire to draw people in.

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