"The Light Had to Witness Itself" Fine Art Print by Winston Chmielinski

This painting “The Light Had to Witness Itself” originally was done with oil on linen.

I’ve always felt a deep inner response to early art (pre-Renaissance) and art from outside the Western canon. It is often non-perspectival, isometric, symbolic, or inverted: it suspends my I-ness for a brief moment, until inevitably remembered.

Meanwhile, The Western canon of painting developed the rules of visual perspective to control the gaze, through uniting with it. Photos, films, games insist they are us even more, entraining with our emotions through the transference of self-identification.

“The Light Had to Witness Itself” holds space for a subjectivity that, for once, isn’t ours. The looking glass reflects only space, no face. We want to look into its eyes and be recognized, but that is not the want of this moment.

This is the world I paint from. This is the space I hold. There is no pressure here to conform to a single perspective. There is space for each of us to exist among other selves.

Winston Chmielinski is a multimedia artist who has studied and lived in NYC, Shanghai, Beijing, Paris and now resides in Berlin. His work incorporates antique textiles, collage and technology. 

To learn more about this artist visit: https://weseeclearly.com/

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