Painting Lights (1976)

• 80%
• 1976
• David Haxton

Painting Lights is about a light source in reverse: how, with negative film, light becomes a source of blackness instead of illumination -how the absence of light creates a light (or white) frame, and flattens out a three-dimensional room space to a two dimensional image in which there are only flat lines on the screen. The film begins with a woman in deep space, on a ladder, painting a vertical tube-light on one side of the screen with "White" paint. As she works, there is less and less light-the dark reflections of light on the floor disappear and the frame becomes whiter. She paints a second light, continuing to white out the frame, and then she dis-appears, leaving nothing except a few traces of black where the lights have been painted over.