The Long Story of Light
Light is the first word and the last promise.
It spoke the world awake, it fell through ruin, it broke the darkness of the tomb, and it will one day swallow the night entirely. Every moment of history—creation, fall, redemption, consummation—moves along that line of light. It’s not a metaphor we made; it’s the rhythm God wrote into the world itself.
This collection, Daylight, was born from that story.
In November, when the days grow thin and the sky carries more grey than gold, I feel the weight of waiting. Every year the dimness feels familiar—the ache of the already and not yet. I keep painting because I believe that ache is not absence; it’s anticipation. The world remembers something it was made for: the radiance of its Maker.
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I think of that first light—the “Let there be” that shattered the void.
I imagine it in Eden, the gold and lavender warmth of a world unbroken. That painting hums with innocence: creation breathing before time hardened its edges.
But soon after came Ex Ruinas Lux, where the world was broken. Haze, where we see through a glass, darkly. And Fracture, where the gold and grey collide. It’s the wound at the world’s heart, the paradox of atonement—devastation that heals.
Each work traces this long story forward, not in exposition, but in color.
After the Storm breathes renewal; light doesn’t erase memory, it transfigures it.
Resurgam stands in holy defiance—the tree that refuses burial, pushing through black toward uncreated light. It’s the heartbeat of the collection, the truth that resurrection is not peace after suffering but the victory that rises through it.
And then, the gentler endings: Ghosts stands at the edge of eternity—a ruin overlooking light that refuses to leave. Dawn Comes Dreaming, where mercies are new every morning. Golden Soul, where glory seeps quietly through matter, where the world is thin with holiness. These last pieces are not resolution so much as promise. The story hasn’t ended; it’s gathering brightness.
While I worked, I kept listening to music that carried that tension—Marcus Mumford, Josh Garrels, Young Oceans. Lament and renewal woven together, as if melody itself were the same light breaking through cloud. Their sound gave shape to what I was trying to say in watercolor and iridescence: that grace doesn’t rush. It moves slowly across the landscape, patient as dawn.
Maybe that’s what this whole season is for.
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We stand between darkness and day, waiting for the light that has already come and will come again. It’s November now, and I find myself telling my son what I’m still learning—that the gospel is not wishful thinking. It’s daylight returning on schedule. The same Christ who said, “Let there be light,” is the One who will one day make all things new.
So Daylight isn’t just a collection; it’s confession. It’s my witness to the light that has never stopped shining, even when the days are short and the sky feels far away. These paintings belong to that long story—to the creation that still groans, the redemption that still burns, and the consummation that will one day dawn without end.
Until then, we live by half-light.
We keep naming what is true.
We wait for the returning of the light—and we paint its promise on every surface we can.
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