By Lisette Schumacher
60 x 80 x 4 cm, 2022
Acrylic on canvas, oak frame with museumglass

From the series Stellar Waves

In the Summer of 2020 Lisette visited the church of Saint-Pierre in Firminy-Vert, France. Le Corbusier designed this building together with his assistant, José Oubrerie.

Upon entering, a dotted pattern of sparkling stars is visible on the wall above the altar. This pattern is based on the Orion constellation. It consists of glass cylinders through which sunlight is captured and projected onto the opposite walls inside the church.

The projection consists of eerie, mysterious streaks of light. They cover the walls and the floor, stairs and benches in a surprising and unpredictable pattern due to clouds moving before the sun. The fluid lines are not fixed but they move and change with the course of the sun. Since you cannot predict its duration or motion it remains an intriguing and exciting sight, one that makes you not want to leave.

Lisette visited the church twice on the same day; closely observing and capturing the shifting light pattern in late morning and late afternoon. Lisette took these feathering waves of light as a starting point to create a mystical and subtle series of paintings, capturing the intangible appearing and disappearing pattern of shifting lines in hushed images.