The Trace of the Sun

The Trace of The Sun features paintings by Kristin Texeira that were created during her artist residency at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Ireland. The residency is situated in a historic cottage on the outskirts of a fishing village called Glandore, where farmland stretches to the sea. The roads are lined with mounds of Irish grass and wild foxgloves. The open landscape offers the ability to track an approaching rainstorm in the distance, and follow the length of the day with the moving sun. The name of this area is called Reeogreena, which translates to the trace of the sun. With the region’s name connoting a visual representation of the marking of time, time became a defining source of inquiry during Kristin’s two-month stay:

What is time? How does it work? How doesn’t it work? Must it always move forward? 

Kristin spent the first night of her residency in the library and discovered Carlo Rovelli’s, The Order of Time. Without access to the internet, she answered these questions with the tools that were readily available: paint, paper, and a library of books. 

Albert Camus wrote, 'Query: How contrive not to waste one’s time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while.’ My greatest fear is wasting Time. So, I paint to understand it, to get closer to it, to keep track of and hold on to it. In the absence of distraction’s many and incessant whispers, the Albers’ residency allowed and created space for Life’s big questions to surface.

Kristin Texeira

Grounded in the Albers' formative work on the interaction of color, Kristin uses color in her own paintings as a touchstone to experience, emotion, place, and most importantly, time. Her paintings function as memory maps, cataloging fleeting moments in tangible colors and shapes, providing proof of existence and mementos of time.

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