We’re off to the Penrith Regional Gallery to see the work of Blue Mountains artist Warwick Fuller. The exhibition is called 'Chasing the Light' and you can see an ever-growing capacity in the artist to see and to capture light. It’s an exhibition on show until 1 November and if you add a visit to the Café and a walk along the Nepean River you’ve got a good day out!
I must admit I am sometimes ambivalent about Fuller - oh, another pretty landscape in a world overstocked with pretty landscapes and popular sentimentality.
I read this in the introduction to the exhibition and some of my reserve was not really settled;
"Fuller strives to make the relationship between his head, his heart, and his hand so seamless that it is unfettered by art history or fashion or interrupted by technical challenges."
Does that mean he doesn’t really know what he’s doing and that his work is old fashioned?
But what if there’s something wonderful about a kind of pure uncomplicated desire to paint what he sees and to paint the places that we’ve all been to? And what if there is something going on here informed by hundreds of years of painting outdoors and the discoveries of the Impressionists?
Watch Penrith Regional Gallery video
He paints the momentary effects of light.
This is not just pretty painting.
This is giving us back the familiar in new ways – close to the art of being a theologian or pastor. He gives us back the familiar renewed by light.
Renewed by light. What an important phrase. The trees are renewed. The escarpment is renewed. The hills are renewed.
Take a look at this detail.
We know that the Blue Mountains are really made up of brown rocks, dull soil, greyish tree trunks and dull green leaves. Then comes the light and you need gold and deep indigo to capture it.
We know water is actually transparent. Then comes the light and you reach for the brightest of blue paint you dare to speckle glistening white.
You make brush strokes in mauves and pinks.
The word is renewed by light
The Bible is replete with the word light.
The Lord is my light and salvation.
He says let there be light – and shines the light of his word.
What colourless and dull things in the world is his light transforming into gold, mauve and pink?
What colour is God painting in you?
As people of light, God’s people as a light to the nations, the light of the world, pure children of God in a warped generation shining like stars. You too are an artist renewing the world with light as you move through the landscape, as you live in familiar relationships.
How is your light painting a world renewed and aglow with God?