“The method of the old masters was to darken the canvas with brown or red-earth ground and then pull gleaming lights out of the gloom with touches of thick oil paint. The technique is called chiaroscuro, a term meaning light out of darkness. And while modern art has generally moved toward brighter colors, the drama of shadowy spaces lit by shafts of light continues to attract some of our most imaginative painters.”

—Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.