My body of work, Chasing the Light, is about the play of light in the place where I swim and walk most days: Gadigal and Birrabirragal country in Sydney/Eora.

Here, light ripples across cliffs, bounces along the surface of waves and dives down to the ocean floor, repeating and reemerging in patterns known as caustic cusps and curves. When I discovered that the shape of this refracted light is the same shape as the cosmos under gravitational pull, it thrilled me.

Leonardo Da Vinci was describing the shape of caustics in mathematical notebook drawings as long ago as the early 1500s. This century, physicists and mathematicians at Duke University in the US developed a theorem to link these light patterns to how gravity magnifies and distorts light from distant galaxies.

I’m fascinated by the way patterns and rhythms repeat in different forms in the landscape. To know that the light you see creating a heart shape in a glass of water, is driven by the same cosmic forces as the sunlight dappling patterns on undersea sand or the interplay of light and shadow dancing across the bow of a boat, is magical to me. It feels like painting the shape of the universe.

@eleanorhall.art