Shine and shadow

1″ x 1″. foil-backed glass

Consider this a one-inch meditation on contrast and balance.  Each time I sit down with glass in front of me to make one of these tiny compositions I realize again that one color is nothing without another, and light is nothing without shadow.  It’s not just about contrast, but about balance and the way one affects the other. I’ve always loved those optical illusions where the same color is shown surrounded by two different colors and it looks so different each way.  I just finished a stained glass window that leaves a tree in the negative space, and this is the same idea.  It’s not clear whether the gold or the black is the foreground or the background.