Mystery Paintings with Light

(original unknown)

Eric Staller

Eric Staller is a sculptor more known for his permanent art installations in public places, but even more impressive is his experimentation with light. His light drawings and sculptures date as far back as the late 1970s. He was perhaps the first photographer to paint light into the live urban environment:




(image credit: Eric Staller)

Intricate Light by Alan Jaras

Alan Jaras captures surreal refraction patterns of light, passing through molded plastic. Amazingly, these photos were made the natural way, without the use of a camera lens, or any retouching by Photoshop. His flickr photostream is one of the most interesting on the web.


"Spicules of Light" by Alan Jaras


"Captured in Light" and "Molten Light" by Alan Jaras

Normally black and white, these photos feature colours added directly into the plastic.

"Complexity of color" by Alan Jaras


Light Among the Ruins

Abandoned buildings and often ghastly places achieve a new license to life with these urban light explorations. The nameless artists responsible for the following "graffitis of light" perhaps live somewhere nearby and make their creative statement by turning ugly venues into canvases of cleansing light.





(original unknown, via Encounter)


Some other examples of mystery paintings with light:


(image credit: Sashnone)




(image credit: Kurbaga)


(original unknown)


Mystery and Melancholy of a Street

These positively heavenly apparitions were created by the LICHTFAKTOR group.







(images credit: LICHTFAKTOR)


Spiritual Glow

Dean Chamberlain takes the inherent glow that all mysterious worship places evoke in our heart, and makes it alive on your computer screen. His temple & palace interiors are both uplifting and mystifying:




There is a certain sanctity in other places, too -
in a bedroom:



in a forest:


(images credit: Dean Chamberlain)


Seaside Transformed

It's impossible not to fall in love with the sea and the coast when seeing marvelous photography by Toby Keller . His light painting technique is often subtle, and it's hard to tell where the natural light ends and the supernatural light begins. Waves provide the long-exposure for the soft glow, and a deep blue ghost-like apparitions seem to lure us, mere mortals, toward their magical portals, and into the infinite light.







Apparition in progress:



And yet, no matter how skillful you are as a painter, natural light is still the winner. Here is very evocative shot of moonlight at sea:



and a riot of colors during sunset:


(images credit: Toby Keller)

See many other Toby Keller's light paintings here and on flickr.