Unbreakable Light is an exhibition of paintings, Light Keepers and video by Ruth Chase, bringing together new and recent work driven by a deepening fascination with light, its science, its mystery and its role as the force that surrounds and sustains us.

The more Chase researched and questioned, the more mysterious light became. It appears across cultures, religions and personal experience in ways that resist easy explanation. Rather than resolve that mystery, the work moves through it, between the visible and the invisible, the known and the felt.

Vintage photographs woven throughout the work create a quiet bridge between past and present, raising questions about the perception of time and the possibility that those who came before us may still be with us.

Running through the work is a symbolic language that includes the Light Body, a recurring simplified figure that first appeared in Chase’s previous work and has carried forward into this series, present here as a companion, guide or ancestral presence. The exhibit also includes a collection of Light Keepers, carved wall sculptures that serve as repositories for found objects, personal treasures and cherished memories.

Unbreakable Light began with the questions: What keeps us going? What remains unbroken? The work does not answer them. It returns to them, again and again, through paint, image and light itself.

ARTIST STATEMENT

When the world gets weird, I retreat to my studio, spend time in nature and work it out with paint.

I have become obsessed with light, science and consciousness, pulling on the thread and following it wherever it takes me. I spend a lot of time with my feet in the dirt and my face toward the sun. Gosh, light is so damn mysterious. No wonder our ancestors paid such close attention to it.

I’ve been returning to old photographs, some of which I have lived with for decades. Maybe I’m looking for traces of what they knew as an anchor in such strange times.

At one point, a shape revealed itself to me as a Light Body. You’ll see it repeated throughout the work as a simple outline, present as a companion and witness. Sometimes I experience it as ancestral, sometimes angelic. Whatever it is, it reminds me that we are in a relationship with forms of light that are not always visible. So I give you these paintings, Light Keepers and video to experience through your own perception. A record of what I’ve been noticing. A collection of meditations disguised as art.