Each carefully placed line of watercolor circumscribes a space of untouched paper - a spontaneous flash of light and beauty.

—Cyndi Conn, Lawrence Fodor / Holding Light

I have always been fascinated with handmade papers. Around 1989 I commissioned a good friend, Sukey Hughes, to produce 100 sheets of handmade Gampi paper for a printmaking project. When I received the paper it was so beautiful I felt like my work wasn’t worthy of it, so I stashed it in a flat file. I have used some of these sheets from time to time, but still retain about half the paper for a future project that will do justice to this incredibly beautiful paper.

In the summer of 2016 I came across a package of beautiful Japanese handmade Kozo paper at Hiromi Papers in Los Angeles. Many handmade papers, and the fiber from which they are made, are too absorbent to hold watercolor in place; the paint tends to bleed out and disperse without being able to hold a specific shape. I wondered if this paper was sized enough to maintain the surface tension of the watercolor in order to hold shapes, which is a critical element in painting the Holding Light pieces. In my initial tests of the paper I found that the paper had just enough sizing to hold the paint, but the paint tended to bleed ever so slightly—which I found added an element that seemed to soften the watercolors. The paper also has visible Kozo fibers running through its matrix, almost iridescent in nature that actually absorbs the pigment in the watercolor more than the rest of the paper. These fibers added another element of interest to the paper—near invisible dancing lines—darker in the painted areas and lighter in the unpainted areas.

In my initial tests I divided the paper into quadrants with graphite including a border between each quadrant, consistent with the perimeter border. In these four squares I could test different colors on one sheet, something I had been considering for the Holding Light series. I choose the colors intuitively for compatibility or contrast—hues that would be harmonious but also unexpected—combinations of colors that might recall seasons or summon specific times of the day. I made a couple of the quadrant paintings, testing the colors and paints on the paper, intending to then shift to a single monochromatic block on a sheet. But the quadrant paintings intrigued me, so I continued to incorporate the different colors, enjoying what they evoked and the process of deciding what colors to use.

The book of paper had a limited number of sheets, of which I used 13 for the Holding Light Quadrant drawings. Here is a selection of 4 of them, one of which includes the colors I choose to use in nine of the other pieces. I am uncertain if I’ll use the rest of this paper for the series, or save them for another project in the future.

—Lawrence Fodor