Bringing together the practices of Peter Godwin, Sally Anderson and Ross Laurie, Holding Light considers the ways perception, memory, and material sensitivity converge in contemporary painting. Across three distinct practices, light emerges not simply as a visual phenomenon, but as a conceptual and emotional register — something held, diffused, and translated through gesture, surface, and duration.
In Godwin’s paintings, light is embedded within the material itself — caught in the density of pigment or emerging through abrasion and removal. Anderson’s works are characterised by shifts in tone and colour, where light operates as a structuring force, defining relationships between form, space, and atmosphere. In Laurie’s work, light is atmospheric rather than descriptive — an internal presence that lends weight to absence and invites contemplative viewing.
In Holding Light, these three practices converge around a shared concern with the transient and intangible. Light becomes a metaphor for the fleeting nature of experience, as well as a material condition shaping the act of painting itself. Each artist approaches this condition differently — through dissolution, accumulation, or refinement — yet all are engaged in a process of translation, seeking to hold something inherently
