Light is the subject of the new intimately scaled paintings by Sandy Van Iderstine and her process makes that subject palpable. Using the palette knife, a range of acrylic paints including reflective metallic hues, gels, and additives, she slowly builds translucent layers of color and incorporates collages of dried paint skins. Her process is organic and each layer, stain, mark, or addition is in response to the ones before and in context with the emerging imagery. The result captures the interplay of light and surfaces, producing radiant and luminous colors that evoke the fleeting breaking warm light at daybreak, or the diffused and melded colors of coral below the ocean’s surface, or the sunlight piercing through a forest canopy providing verdant hues against blue skies.