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.

Purev and Buyantogtokh enjoy the warmth of the fire in the snow in Altai Mountains, Mongolia, September 2016. Navigate the snowy wilds of Mongolia with this nomadic reindeer herding family. Photographer Joel Santos dived 1000km into the depths of Northern Mongolia to visit the Ganbaa family near Khovsgol Lake. (Photo by Joel Santos/Barcroft Images)

Artist Vik Muniz is known for his gigantic composite installations and sculptures created from thousands of individual objects. In this new collaboration with artist and MIT researcher Marcelo Coelho, Muniz takes the opposite approach and explores the microscopic with a new series of sandcastles etched onto individual grains of sand.

Pottery heads by artist Johan Thunell are displayed at The Affordable Art Fair on March 15, 2012 in London, England. 120 galleries are displaying works costing from £40 – £4000. Photography, paintings, prints and sculptures are on sale from 15–18th March 2012. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

The Jinshanling Great Wall is seen after a rainfall on March 31, 2022 in Chengde, Hebei Province of China. (Photo by Zhou Wanping/VCG via Getty Images)

A man walks past an advertisement sign promoting a bank in Seoul in this September 3, 2009 file photo. South Korea is expected to release GDP dara this week. (Photo by Lee Jae-Won/Reuters)

Members of the audience sit in the centre of the catwalk as the watch models for the C/MEO Collective walk by at Fashion Week Australia in Sydney on May 17, 2017. (Photo by Jason Reed/Reuters)