Written By Chunbum Park

Rachel Macfarlane’s showing of paintings at the Hollis Taggart Downtown is titled, “Afterlight,” and it is her second solo exhibition with the gallery. If the previous exhibition involved a concept about “before” at a level of subconscious (in the form of word association), then this show is intended as something “after” involving light.

We humans take light for granted, the same way we disrespect and disregard nature. Ever since Thomas Edison invented the commercially practical light bulb in 1879, we humans had the power to switch the light on and off with our fingertips. Before then, modern humans and cavemen relied on flint stones to light torches and campfires but otherwise the only source of light was the sun (as well as the moon and the stars).

The significance of the sunlight is overwhelming in Macfarlane’s paintings as the provider of energy, the enabler of vision, and the symbolic and spiritual signifier of truth that illuminates and liberates. Nature in the physical realm would not survive without light, and neither would we who depend on nature for sustenance.