Marion Harper

I Am Scattering like Light proposes a visual journey through abstraction, amorphic forms, dimensional models, and demarcated spaces. Like the alchemist Nicholas Flamel, I have sought an “elixir” — the highest aim of ancient alchemical transmutation: the turning of base metal into gold, or the compound said to grant eternal life — a kind of philosopher’s stone, an illuminated painting. The works draw on alchemical metaphors: dissolving, coagulating, amalgamating and precipitating. They explore shifting points of focus, perspective and spatial depth, with bodily forms becoming vessels for transformation. Like scientific experiments, geometries appear as specimens in a cabinet of curiosity. Through candy pigments and organic forms, abstract geometry and detailed linearity, layering and transparency, the paintings stage acts of transmutation. Three-dimensional space collides with flatness, deflates and conflates. Embracing both the irrational and the cogent, objects of pure perception and otherworldly presences, I worked toward a philosopher’s stone: an illuminated painting scattering like light.