Candle, 2026
Acrylic and ink on canvas130 x 95 cm
51 1/4 x 37 1/2 inches
An anglepoise lamp, drawn in thin black line, is the main protaginist in the painting Candle (2026). It bows its shade towards a patch of yellow on the left, which reads as the pool of light it casts. High on the right, a small candle burns in a chamberstick, easy to miss beside its taller, more modern neighbour. The candle is upstaged by the lamp, but the lamp is upstaged in turn. The largest sources of light seem to be the two blunt patches of white on either side of the canvas, and they belong to neither lamp nor candle. Set largely on the green, both objects sit outside that brightness, so the painting is, ironically, lit by its own paint rather than by anything it depicts.
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