My name is Barbara Earl Thomas. I am a Seattle-based artist. I'm a painter, writer, and I also do sculpture. I do whatever comes to mind. And the painting we're standing in front of is by George de la Tour.
I picked this because this painting not only documents something that's a religious subject, but it also documents a moment in art history that has to do with how one captures light. and how it moves the eye around the image and what kind of rhythm it can make and the kind of quietness. I mean this is a soundless painting.
You don't get the sense that people are speaking in very high voices. I just like the idea of the fact that light can be the subject and if you're going to think about how you define a moment in sort of biblical history that no one's ever seen. You put it in this kind of mysterious light and let people imagine into it. Her hand and the way it's shaped around his legs, all of those things are making these really wonderful shapes and that means that he's thinking about positive negative and thinking about what would happen if you took that body out, what would be there. So I think about those things when I'm painting because that means that.
They move beyond just defining the body as an object, but in fact it's about the painting and how the painting fits together and how it's a whole and not just an illustrative. This is illustrating, illustrating, illustrating. In fact it locks together.
You take something out and things fall apart. That's mastery.