Why We Keep Returning to Glass, Light and Reflection

Some motifs do not return because they are strategic. They return because they continue to feel alive.

Glass, light and reflection are like that for us. We keep coming back to them because they change an image while still remaining tied to the world. A window, a reflection or a softened surface can turn a familiar scene into something less stable and more open. You are still looking at something real, but you are also looking through it, across it or beyond it.

That shift continues to interest us. It creates a small distance from direct description and opens a way into atmosphere, ambiguity and feeling.

Looking into another world

One of the things we find most compelling about glass is how it changes the act of looking. It does not simply separate inside from outside. It also alters what is seen. The image becomes layered. Light moves across the surface. Reflections interfere with what is behind it. Edges soften. Depth becomes less certain.

What interests us is that you are no longer only looking at a scene. You are looking at a scene being transformed in front of you.

That transformation can feel subtle, but it changes the emotional quality of the image. A completely direct view can be descriptive and resolved. A view through glass can feel less fixed. It leaves more space for interpretation. It suggests another world without fully giving it to you.

Why this keeps returning in the work

We are drawn to subjects that allow a movement from observation toward abstraction. Glass, reflection and filtered light offer exactly that. They give us a medium in which we can explore refraction, optical illusion, softness, interruption and visual layering without losing contact with lived experience.

This is part of why they recur so often in our practice. They let us start with something recognisable and gradually move toward a different kind of image language.

In the Diorama works, for example, this became a way of working with the feeling of looking out through a window. That is such a normal act that it can almost disappear from attention, but it still carries a very specific atmosphere. There is a kind of distance in it, and also a kind of intimacy. You are present, but slightly removed. You are looking outward, but through a surface that changes what you see.

What interests us is not only the appearance of that moment, but the way it feels. The image becomes a way of abstracting that feeling rather than simply recording the scene.

Light as structure, not only illumination

Light matters to us not only because it reveals a subject, but because it actively builds the image.

Across reflection, glass and translucent surfaces, light starts behaving like a material. It bends, scatters, doubles, dissolves edges and creates interruptions. It can flatten a surface in one moment and open a sense of depth in the next. It can make an image calmer, stranger or more unstable.

This is important in how we work. We are often less interested in showing an object clearly than in understanding what light does to its presence. Once light begins to refract, reflect or veil, the image starts to move away from straightforward representation. It becomes less about naming what is there and more about building a perceptual experience.

That movement is central to our practice.

From ordinary looking to abstraction

Many of the experiences that stay with us are not dramatic ones. They are ordinary visual situations that carry a distinct atmosphere when you pay close attention to them. Looking through a window is one of them. Seeing an image interrupted by reflection is another. Watching a surface shift because of changing light is another again.

These are modest experiences, but they often contain the beginning of abstraction.

For us, abstraction does not have to mean leaving the world behind. Often it begins by looking at the world carefully enough that its stable appearance starts to loosen. Reflection, filtering, blur and layering make that possible. They let an image move away from certainty while still remaining connected to perception.

That is why these elements keep returning. They are not visual effects added afterwards. They are part of how we think through an image. They allow us to work between what is seen, what is sensed and what can only be suggested.

Staying with what still feels open

Some subjects keep generating work because they still feel unfinished. Glass, light and reflection belong to that category for us.

They continue to offer a way into images that are neither fully descriptive nor fully detached. They allow us to explore perception as something unstable, layered and emotional. They also keep us close to something we value in the work more broadly: the possibility that an image can remain open, and that this openness is part of what gives it lasting presence.

That is why we return to them. Not because they are solved, but because they still keep changing.

Continue

Continue exploring the Diorama series, or view the Gallery to see how perception, atmosphere and abstraction recur across the work.