Christopher Le Brun: Moon Rising in Daylight

“There is a phrase, and to me an immensely suggestive and beautiful one, ‘pure painting’, that stands for an explicit orientation towards imagination. I envisage a type of pictorial music, full of light and colour, movement and the play of visual invention for its own sake.” With these words, Christopher Le Brun reflects on his vision of painting in “Moon Rising in Daylight”.

He connects this orientation to his early years by the sea and his Channel Islands origins, which inspire an idea of painting impatient of foreground and preferring open horizons. For Le Brun, painting links directly to the bright and unquenchable reality beyond the studio. Weather becomes a metaphor: the rapid alternation of rain, sun, mist, and cloud mirrors the shifts of intuition, shaping a process of combining and layering until a poised state emerges. Each work embodies a balance of stillness and imminence, evoking a new “invitation to the voyage”.

Le Brun considers painting today in relation to chess or poetry, a practice whose materials change little yet remain charged with immediacy and touch. Though painting may seem displaced among technologies, its very stillness reinforces its connection to human fragility, to our sense of jeopardy and responsiveness.

In “Moon Rising in Daylight”, perception becomes central. Seeing the moon in daylight requires active attention, unlike its nocturnal glow that naturally attracts the gaze. This act of discovery carries pleasure and surprise, prompting the impulse to share. At night the moon shifts towards symbol, but by day its sudden appearance awakens questions of perception and beauty. Le Brun affirms painting as a medium that, like the moon, rewards the attentive viewer with unexpected revelations.