Life of Christ. Eglise Saint-Sulpice de Fougères (detail) 1919

Ludovic Alleaume made this detail of the Life of Christ window at Eglise Saint-Sulpice de Fougères using glass and light, a tricky medium, like trying to paint with sunshine! There's such a beautiful flow to the image. I keep coming back to the way the white doves almost seem to melt into each other. The slight variations in color and texture give the piece depth. Think about each individual piece of glass, carefully chosen and placed, then fused together. See the way Alleaume uses line to define the wings of the doves? It's like a drawing in light. It reminds me a little of the compositional structure you can see in the work of Paula Modersohn-Becker – these artists who were striving for a new kind of symbolic language. Ultimately, though, it’s the process, the layering, the accidents, and the sheer, stubborn will to make something from nothing, that really grabs me. What do you think?