Opening Reception: David Simpson: First Light

There is something inside the viewer that leaps in response to David Simpson’s paintings, a feeling that rises, draws a deep “ah” of breath, and becomes entranced, enmeshed in the orbit of each piece.

The work included in First Light presents a survey of Simpson’s famous interference paintings from the past thirty years. Using a unique formulation of interference paints containing micro-particles of iridescent mica – Simpson painstakingly applies layer upon layer of translucent paint onto the canvas. The painted surface becomes three-dimensional, giving light room to move – shimmering, reflecting, and refracting. It is this depth and chance interaction of light and particle that causes the signature color shifts that Simpson’s work is known for.

Each piece is a revelation – from the subtle to the radical. A piece like La Belle Bleu can shift from a shining, icy, saturated blue to a flat, pewter-heavy violet with a move from left to right. Changes in viewpoint are not the only ways that these pieces can shift. The quality, color, and intensity of the light itself will cause changes. Natural light, gallery light, a sunny day versus a cloudy one, the declination of the sun in summer or winter, these can cause a bright blue painting to become deep purple, or a red-shift in a copper one.

Simpson’s interference paintings infuse the unknowable, changeability, into what at first appears fixed. Something of nature, a living element, shines through in these pieces. Never the same. Always beautiful.