People shop at a market ahead of the Lunar New Year in Hong Kong on February 6, 2024 ahead of the Lunar New Year of the Dragon which falls on February 10. (Photo by Peter Parks/AFP Photo)

Massangbe Doumbia, 25, a street vendor, carries goods on her head at the Adjame main market in Abidjan, Ivory Coast on March 7, 2024. (Photo by Issouf Sanogo/AFP Photo)

A portrait of French WWI soldier Edouard Marius Ivaldi is displayed on a tablet, in this illustration picture, alongside his battlefield grave memorial, a wooden cross with a battlefield helmet in Champagne, eastern France, November 3, 2015. (Photo by Charles Platiau/Reuters)

A fragment of a Koran manuscript is seen in the library at the University of Birmingham in Britain July 22, 2015. A British university said on Wednesday that fragments of a Koran manuscript found in its library were from one of the oldest surviving copies of the Islamic text in the world, possibly written by someone who might have known Prophet Mohammad. Radiocarbon dating indicated that the parchment folios held by the University of Birmingham in central England were at least 1,370 years old, which would make them one of the earliest written forms of the Islamic holy book in existence. (Photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters)

A restaurant in Chelsea is giving customers the ultimate post-pub treat – by selling a burger for £1,100. The world's most expensive burger, dubbed the “Glamburger”, is stuffed with a burger patty made from 220 grams of Kobe Wagyu beef minced with 60 grams of New Zealand venison and seasoned with smoked Himalayan salt. (Photo by Groupon)

Serbian police officers of the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit pose for a picture in their base outside Belgrade October 8, 2014. When the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, in August sparked sometimes violent protests, the response of police in camouflage gear and armoured vehicles wielding stun grenades and assault rifles seemed more like a combat operation than a public order measure. Some U.S. police departments have recently acquired U.S. military-surplus hardware from wars abroad, but there are many law enforcers around the world whose rules of engagement also allow the use of lethal force with relatively few restrictions. But for every regulation that gives police wide scope to use firearms, there is another code that sharply limits their use. In Serbia, police may use measures ranging from batons to special vehicles, water cannon and tear gas on groups of people who have gathered illegally and are behaving in a way that is violent or could cause violence, but they may use firearms only when life is endangered. (Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)

Indigenous woven backpacks called guayare are seen in front of a house in Paraitepui village, before a walking excursion to Mount Roraima, near Venezuela's border with Brazil January 13, 2015. A mysterious table-topped mountain on the Venezuela-Brazil border that perplexed 19th century explorers and inspired “The Lost World” novel is attracting ever more modern-day adventurers. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

Light is the sole reason why life exists. It provides us with warmth; it allows us to see; it nourishes all the living things on this planet. Many painters, especially the masters of Old Renaissance Period, have recognized the importance of light and its intimate connection with nature and life itself. In their paintings they gave tribute to light, giving the impression that their paintings had a light source hidden within them. Al Hogue, the artist who created the paintings that you see before you, has studied their techniques for many years. As time went by, light permeated not only his paintings by also his life, becoming his sole philosophy.