Page 6 - Essay Awakenings Reloaded by Paul McCloskey

until a time is reached when these paradoxes vanish and conscious choice
doesn’t exist. I think of painting more in terms of the drama of this process than

I do of ‘natural’ forces. The ethics involved in ‘seeing’ as one is painting, the
purity of the act, so to speak is more actual to me than pre-assumed images or
ideas of picture structure’ (1957-58, p.20)

The use of gold within this series of paintings stems from this
concept of the halo and the flat gold leaf backgrounds of the early Greek
iconography. Although these gold areas coexist with the painted areas of light

perceived as being more natural to the painted landscape, its purpose however is
principally to
separate

divine/spiritual
light from
earthly light,
gold being

precious and
standing out as

extraordinary,
intending to
Fig 3. Landscape with Yellow. Triptych. Oil on Canvas. 183cm X 91cm
evoke a sense of
the sacred. Gesa Thiessen writes in ‘Theology and Modern Irish Art’ (1999,

p157) ‘In the history of art the
sun or bright (yellow-golden)

light signifies salvation, hope,
life and, more specifically, the
divinity of and redemption in

Christ, often through the halo’.
th
During the 19 century the
significance of light in Turners

later works in particular, was
the emanation of God's spirit.
Suggesting light as a means of
representing divinity, this

radiance seems almost Fig 3a. Landscape with yellow. Detail.
indelibly written into people’s

psyche as a means of suggesting divinity or spirit. I have also built up layers of
paint under some of the gold areas to add texture and shimmer (see details) thus