Anybody who has worked consistently with photography cannot escape becoming sensitised to the subtleties of light. Every stage in the photographic process is the result of reflected or transmitted light.
Further to this is the capacity of any plastic medium to interpret light in its own terms. This is something that has driven a great many artists on the understanding that to give dumb material a quality that it does not possess is a kind of alchemy.
In 1989 I made a very large drawing for a travelling exhibition called “The Tree of Life” an initiative of the environmental organisation, Common Ground with the support of the South Bank Centre. The drawing was of an oak tree in a strong raking light; it was called “Growing/Dark” and referred to a conundrum I once read that plant cells divide more rapidly in the dark than in the light and that therefore a tree grows by default towards the light.
The idea that the principle of phototropism is a conceit, I found very intriguing. The writer and naturalist Grant Watson succinctly described this as “Growth by Contradiction” in his book “Walking with Fancy” 1943.
In making this drawing I was intrigued by what a limited medium like pencil could accomplish and it spawned more explorations into a kind of inert luminosity.
The drawing here is the last drawing of a loose series and was prompted by the observation that its dark powdery, rocky surface is not very reflective.
In fact the intense silvery light is all of the sun’s illumination that is reflected back to the earth.
This rather unscientific conundrum was sufficient to prompt me to dwell upon the idea of light reflected by an unreflective body.
By allowing the moon to be in its gibbous phase it becomes a moment in time and a means by which I could avoid stereotype.