Sample Study   Available in Limited Edition Prints

One of the greatest things ever said of man was that phrase in which our Lord summed up the influence of John the Baptist— “He was a burning and a shining light.” 

God grant that we may not have the cold light of the moon that shines, but does not burn, but of the sunlight, that fills the world with radiance and from the heat whereof nothing is hid.

Light is gentle, and the influence of our character may be without voice or language, stealing through the office, the workroom, the social circle, or the home.  Light is absolutely humble, falling equally upon the stick and stone, upon the young lambs as they play in the fields as it does upon the golden cross above St. Paul’s cathedral; and wherever you find the truth of Jesus Christ, the glow of it will illumine the most obscure corners as well as the more conspicuous platforms of your life.  Light is unobtrusive, you do not see ‘it’; but only the objects on which its wavelets break.  You are only conscious of the presence of light because of its revelation of the true nature of all things in heaven and earth.  All things, says the Apostle, are made manifest by the light, for that which is made manifest is light. 

The wick of the candle becomes absolutely transformed when it touches the central flame.  Too many people resemble exquisitely prepared candles, the richest and best materials having been used in their manufacture, and it may be that they stand in golden candelabra, but all is useless because the flame has never been kindled. 

Discussion/Critique:

 As sterile as the items are there is intimacy in this work. 

 In order to know a work of art, one must reach awareness of it through an aesthetic view, that is, an attitude dictated by the existence of the work of art as a work of art, and by the capacity of one’s mind to apprehend it as such. 

You find yourself relishing the material qualities of metallic sheen and light, but then, in their turn, the forms assert themselves.  Almost without you noticing it, a feeling of harmony grows within yourself.  As if in obedience to some imperative ‘Let there be light’, the group of objects stand out from the uniformly somber background. You sense that the objects are linked together by bonds which, though tenuous, are firm. For instance, there is the coffee pot, a graceful parenthesis, which includes at its extremities the group of plates and the group of cups, gathering them into the common presence.  But this ‘presence’ owes its unity even more to the play of light.  Against the banked-up shadows of the background the objects are bathed in light of burning flames.  Various impressions succeed each other and are repeated in one’s mind, but they all have this in common— they belong to an order of experience which precludes their being reduced to any other sort of impression, as if their wicks were in a spiritual clime, where things take on an existence other than their everyday guise as objects.  You feel the presence of an invisible architecture, surpassing the sensations received from contemplating the objects themselves, and, slowly but irresistibly, the spiritual grandeur of this still-life expands within you. 

Aesthetic knowledge, therefore, is founded on the following premise:  The work of art confers on persons and on things an existence which stems from an order of which they are both the symbol and the ma

God grant that we may not have the cold light of the moon that shines,  [light reflected inside of the metal cups] but does not burn, but of the sunlight, [light from the candles— symbolic] that fills the world with radiance and from the heat whereof nothing is hid.