Shadows don't exist as things in themselves - each one is simply an absence of light. Shadows are nothings that we think of as things because light predominates in the visual realm with the consequence that shadows appear as distinct individual entities. As a shadow grows in scale (as light recedes) it’s character transforms from a thing to a phenomenon: it becomes an overall darkness; no longer a thing but an absence of a thing; of light, and we call this absence darkness. No longer is the shadow graspable by vision but instead it encompasses vision, starves it or overwhelms it. A shadow is no more a thing than a vacuum or nothingness.
"Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing." — Ray Bradbury
And yet shadows are rarely empty
They’re filled with the soft ambience of reflected light
Both partial darkness and partial illumination combined
In which subtle modulations of light and half light
Merge and interweave
A penumbra
A semidarkness in which may be perceived
A boundless play of tonalities.
They’re filled with the soft ambience of reflected light
Both partial darkness and partial illumination combined
In which subtle modulations of light and half light
Merge and interweave
A penumbra
A semidarkness in which may be perceived
A boundless play of tonalities.
For Dr.art Aija Druvaskalne-Urdze 1963 – 2010.
