Ancient Light – Baroque

Painted on an oval canvas, linen stretched over an MDF panel, ready to hang.

What draws me to ancient architecture, any great structure built before machines, is the sheer weight of human effort behind it. Stone quarried by hand, shaped with hammer and chisel. Calculations held entirely in someone's mind. Sometimes centuries of building -way too often on the backs of people who had no choice.
The awe I feel standing before these buildings is not directed upward. It's directed at us; at what humans are capable of conceiving, carrying, completing.
‘Ancient Light – Baroque’ began there. A tower, with all the drama the word implies. The craquelé surface already carries something of that age, that slow cracking of time. I painted some areas thinly, letting the texture speak. Others I worked into freely, impressionistically, less concerned with accurate stone than with the feeling of stone that has stood for centuries.