Cycle of Light

STATUS: ARTIST’S OWN COLLECTION — not for sale.

“Cycle of Light” is a particularly personal painting for me. Its starting point was a landscape from my family’s home region — the vertical rhythm of trees and their dense, compact crowns. As the painting developed, the recognisable view gradually lost its literal character. What remained was its structure: verticals, concentrations, openings and the weight of matter.

I incorporated ash from my home stove into the painting — the same stove that heats my home. For me, ash is not merely a painting material. It is a trace of transformation.

The wood grew through light. In the fire, it released the energy it had accumulated as warmth and light, leaving ash behind. I then combined this ash with pigments and acrylic medium, introducing it once again into the matter of the painting.

The first, much more intense layers of colour were partially concealed. Further actions — the movement of the hand, rubbing with the fingers, applying matter and scratching the surface — once again revealed fragments of the earlier painting. What had been visible at the beginning returned in a transformed form.

Seen close up, the surface is at times raw, almost brutal: filled with scratches, accumulations, exposed areas and traces of intervention. From a distance, however, these same fragments come together as subtle tonal transitions and rhythms of light.

In this way, a certain cycle is completed for me: light participates in the growth of wood, the wood passes through fire and leaves ash behind, and the ash returns to the painting, where it begins once again to interact with light.

The landscape does not disappear. It remains within the structure of the painting together with the memory of the place I come from.

“Cycle of Light” is one of the most intimate paintings I have made. That is why it remains in my home and in my own collection.