When light and darkness meet they give birth to the three-dimensional space in which we live here on the Earth. The experience of this space has to do with our point of view, with the relation between our feet on the Earth, our eyes and the Sun. Every human being has his own stand-point and therefore his personal relation with the light and consequently with the space.
Up to the period of the Renaissance the space was not experienced in relation with the light, but through the perspective. In Italy, Leonardo da Vinci begins to change this relation with the space through what he describes in his “Trattato sulla pittura ” (see Note n.3) as “airy perspective”. For him “airy perspective” is the relation between the light and the earthly atmosphere (darkness/warmth) depending on its density; in this relation and from this meeting we have the space. Therefore, to create the threedimensional space in painting it means to put oneself in relation with the action of the light in the atmosphere from a certain point of view.
In his last painting (The Last Supper) he shows us as the light coming from the window behind the Christ creates a space on the painting. He shows us also how this light can become inward light radiating through the transformed darkness/warmth in the Christ in the center of the painting itself.
Rembrandt (1606-1669) in north Europe (Holland) has gone further on completing this experience of space in painting. He is tied to the earth by an intense love, his paintings are pure and warm atmosphere of gold and burnt sienna. In this love for the earth, the consciousness soul lives ; the consciousness soul starts developing towards the 16th century and Rembrandt is a great representative of it.
In his paintings there is a great space, you feel you can walk in them quite for a long time. It is a living light, full of warmth, while the darkness is over the material heaviness and it is now completely renewed, rised again.
In my opinion, the utmost expression of this great transformation is visible on the painting “The Jewish Bride” 1622, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, where we can see a perfect image of the healing meeting between the nerve (neuro -sense pole) and the blood (metabolic pole) of the human being. The husband brings the new light through the gold of the dress while the bride brings the darkness/warmth through the vermilion/scarlet. Getting very close to the painting you can see in the gold thick and substantial brushes of ochre, carmine and white all very dirty, while in distance this heavy substance slowly becomes golden light. The same with vermilion rasing up and brighting by sparkling “stars” like the blood purified by the egoism.
We can say: by Leonardo Da Vinci there is a starting point for a new feeling of the space, but in him the space it is still closed, it is still a line perspective. In Rembrandt’s paintings we come deep in the darkness, the space becomes bigger, more inner. But what he paints, how we can see it in his pictures, it is still looked upon from outside. It is not transparent.
Liane Collot D’Herbois brings now the new qualitative space, we can look through it, it becomes transparent. Liane Collot penetrates the space, through the primordial creative forces of light and darkness and so she comes to a “ colour space“.
In this completely renewed relation between light and darkness/warmth one has a new space: the inner space. Now the human being can become conscious of the heart’s light where the human soul can feel at home on the earth in a new dimension of freedom.