✨ Why Gold Glows: The Light-Responsive Nature of Precious Metals in My Work
When people encounter my work in person, one of the first things they say is, “It glows.”
And it does. But not because of anything I’ve painted.
The glow comes from the material itself—genuine gold, silver, copper, and brass leaf—applied in torn, collaged fragments across the panel. What you’re seeing is not just light on the surface, but light moving through it.
The luminous quality of my work is not just aesthetic—it’s material. Gold and silver leaf interact with light in ways fundamentally different from pigment-based media due to their atomic and crystalline structures.
Gold, for example, has a unique ability to reflect, scatter, and transmit light across the visible spectrum. Its electrons resonate with incoming light waves—a phenomenon called surface plasmon resonance—which contributes to its distinctive warm glow and depth. Unlike paint, which absorbs and diffuses light, genuine gold leaf allows light to penetrate its surface and bounce back with subtle shifts in hue and brilliance. Silver leaf behaves similarly, but with cooler, more iridescent tones that shift with the environment.
When layered in varying karats and combined with hand-dyed leaf or translucent oil glazes, these materials create an optical effect that is dynamic and multi-dimensional. The paintings appear to change with every viewing angle and light condition, offering a unique experience of the work in different spaces and times of day.
This physical responsiveness makes the work almost sculptural in its behavior—flat panels that invite movement and interaction, never offering a single, static image. Digital reproductions fail to capture these effects; they flatten the layered complexity that, in person, creates an immersive and evolving encounter with light itself.
As you move around a piece, it changes. Morning light will reveal one set of hues; evening another. Even the color of the walls, the temperature of the room, the movement of your own body—it all alters what you see.
Because of this, my paintings are best experienced in person. They ask you to engage as you would with sculpture or land—by being present, by walking alongside, by returning again and again. A digital image flattens this experience, though a well-lit video might offer a glimpse.
In an age of images, these pieces are meant to be lived with.
To move.
To shift.
To glow.
