Ensemble

Cathedrals of Light

After monochromy and achromy, Jef Verheyen explores panchromy, embracing not just many colours but all the colours of the rainbow and sun path. He uses these to paint refractions, tondos and cathedrals of light as homages to light. In 1974 Verheyen moves to Provence. He writes several times about its exceptional ‘shimmering light’, a light that inspires him to paint an homage to impressionist painter Claude Monet. Verheyen doesn’t base this work on observation, however, but rather on the imagination of light as an idea or concept. Light takes shape here in the enchanting interplay of crystal-clear colours. Verheyen paints them he says ‘flat on a deep painting’. Adimensional, infinite and intangible. Like a space. Or like a breath.