November 22, 2025 - December 11, 2025
White River, South Africa
Click here to view: Karin Daymond Exhibition Catalogue
Source
I have been absorbed by the idea of light as a source of energy, both metaphorical and physical, and savouring the notion that there is a great big ball of fire out there, just the perfect distance away that it sustains life on earth.
My recent work builds a small bridge between this rather grand idea and how it can be represented by harnessing the core principles of painting - light and dark, rough and smooth, warm and cool, thick and thin. It’s quite a stretch really, yet I hope that you can feel the heat coming from the fire paintings, experience the longing in the fading light, hear the crack of the lightning, and sense the vibration of the colour (generated by photosynthesising bacteria) in the lichens.
It is these moments when energy is transformed (it cannot be created or destroyed) that we are reminded of the vigour of life. Plants grow, storing the sun’s energy in the bonds between carbon molecules. Fires are those plants burning, breaking the carbon bonds and releasing energy in the form of heat. My partner, a biologist, says that it is more complicated than this (he spoke of excited photons and electrons jumping between orbits!) but I’m sure you get the idea.
The words a light event keep coming to mind; those moments when one is struck by the quality of light, or perhaps how things seem changed in different lights. These moments are transient, and if we pay attention, can remind us of bigger things. We almost always pause to contemplate a sunset; that poignant universal feeling that takes us outside ourselves and connects to something primordial, in the same way that we relate to circles and spheres as characterising the germination and cyclical nature of life.
Karin Daymond
November 2025
White River Gallery
