White Light Painting, Grid Series, 1970

Since her time as a student at the Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts) in LA in the mid-1960s, Mary Corse has been interested in capturing what she calls the “vibration of light.” Like many of the artists associated with California’s Light and Space movement, Corse turned to non-traditional industrial materials to make works that explore the mutable qualities of perception. In 1968 she began experimenting with glass microspheres, the tiny reflective particles used to create traffic lines on the highway. Her application of this unique surface treatment creates a soft, shimmering glow that shifts as the viewer moves. White Light Painting, Grid Series is one of only two paintings in this series that feature visible, loose brushstrokes made on a diagonal axis, disrupting the uniformity of the perpendicular grid. This work demonstrates Corse’s interest in the viewer’s bodily experience.As the artist explained, “painting is not really on the wall, it’s in your perception.”