Lights
On some early mornings, when everything is still dark, I go down to the studio and sit before the great window. There I wait, motionless, to watch how the light gradually restores to things their weight. It is like witnessing a gentle resurrection. Day breaks once more.
The objects rise up little by little, gripped by the brightness that advances, moonlike, through the half-light. The light settles upon the reliefs, illuminating what is essential, carving out volume. Northern light, forever faithful to its coldness, emancipated from the yellow rays of the omnipotent sun. Integral light, pregnant with nocturnality, glowing silver throughout the day, grazing the color of each thing and spilling over the whole.
It is in that temperance and in that rhythm that all my times come together into a single full one: the time of discovering, the time of understanding, the time of loving. Where to paint is to divine and every movement of the hand fuses contemplation into action.
The day draws to a close and the studio turns gradually toward the half-light. Between those two lights, things, urgent, come tumbling down; and in that vertiginous descent there is one arrested instant, a kind of clear-sightedness: it is reality blessing us with its last gleam, reinventing itself terminal and beautiful, before withdrawing once more into the darkness.
