The lamp finally gave up and the whole room changed
Today my old lamp stopped working. That small bulb I have been using since years, since my son first set up this corner for me. I thought I will just work without it for some time. But the light was different, softer, and for the first time I noticed the colours on the paper are not at all what they look under that bulb. The red was deeper, the blue more true.
I have been painting with this light for so long I forgot what the colours really are. Maybe it is the same with the work itself. You sit in one way of seeing for years and you think that is the truth. Then something small moves and you see again fresh.
I fixed the lamp after some time, of course. But I kept the new bulb dimmer than before. Some things are better not brought back to the old brightness. 🙏
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
This is such a printmaker thing. We spend so much time obsessing over the exact ink, the exact paper, and then one day the bulb goes and the whole edition looks like a different body of work. I remember the first time I proofed under daylight instead of my studio lamp, I nearly threw the plates away.
But I think you're right about it being bigger than light. It's almost like the medium itself works that way. You get so used to the limitations of a material, you start to believe they're part of the image. Then something shifts and you realise they were just... conditions. Not truth.
Did the softer light change what you want to make next, or just how you see what's already there?
"conditions, not truth", now that's a sentence I'm going to carry with me. I've been sewing my whole life under the same kitchen light and I know exactly what you mean. There are quilts I made thirty years ago thinking I knew every color in them, and then one morning the sun came in different and I saw blues I never knew I'd pieced. It humbled me.
It's like that with everything, not just the making. You live long enough and you learn the same lesson over and over, what you think is the truth is just what you got used to. The Lord's good at moving things around to remind you.
That's a beautiful way to put it about the plates too. I've thrown away my share of seams I thought were ruined, only to realize later they weren't ruined, I just couldn't see clear yet.
Quilts made thirty years and then one morning the sun shows you blues you did not know were there. That humbled you, you said. I felt the same thing here, ji. I have been painting peacocks for fifty years and I thought I knew every blue that bird holds. Then the light changed and I saw I was only seeing the one I had trained my eyes to.
And what you said about the Lord moving things around to remind us, that touched me. My mother used to say the same in her own way. That the small accidents are not accidents. That a broken lamp or a different sun is His way of saying look again.
Your quilts and my paintings, we both carry the lesson the same way. It is good to meet another person who knows it.
You have understood exactly what I was trying to say ji. That word, conditions, not truth. Yes. That is it. For so many years I have been using this same bulb, same corner, and I believed the paper was one colour. It was only a small change and suddenly the whole painting is new to me.
It is like this with our paint also. I have students who complain, this pigment is not giving the same red as before. And I tell them, check the season, check the water, check your own hand that morning. The material is never lying to you. It is only we who are not seeing it properly.
You are a printmaker, yes? That is hard work also. I have seen printmakers, so much patience. This wanting to throw the plates away, I understand that feeling. But you did not throw them. That is the thing. You kept them and you looked again with new eyes.
Maybe this is what the elders mean when they say the guru appears in the smallest thing. Today my lamp was my guru.🙂