‘‘Fugitive Light’’, Peter James Smith
(Milford Galleries, Queenstown)
PETER JAMES SMITH’S ‘‘Fugitive Light’’ is like opening a door and stepping back in time or into a book, as if you’re looking through the eyes of a longago figure, existing in a meld of art, science, nature and spirituality. The evocative landscapes capture the ‘‘fugitive’’ light, often the last glow in the sky, those brief moments in the evening before the darkness of night casts a veil on the scene below.
The land we look upon is constantly changing, ecologically and through the expansion of knowledge and developing technology. As our minds change, so too does the way we look at the world. The landscape will never again be what it was a minute ago, a year ago, a century ago, yet there is a sense of continuity and perpetuity, as if it will always be there, containing the familiar and the places yet to be explored.
Smith brings together past and present, translating the sights of his own travels and life experience on to canvas, but superimposing excerpts of writing from old ship logs and explorers journals, figures from historical data, mathematical equations and astronomical notations. The eye manages to take in both seamlessly, and its as if you’re back in that time of early discovery, as if the words are scrolling past your vision, and you’re literally seeing the rapid thoughts and calculations from the mind of another form in front of you.