Rija Adeel

Selected works & fragments

Rija Adeel

Some things yield themselves only in low light.

A small light once kept vigil at the room's edge.

Begin
01Introduction

An artist of unhurried colour

I make work as most remember — tardily, and a little out of sequence.

Hue precedes meaning. I choose a shade because it is true, not because I understand it, and the accounting, if it comes at all, comes late.

Much of my work is left open of purpose, and is the better for it. Not all things ask to be resolved; a held breath is still a kind of sound.

Regard first. Silence, then colour. Meaning in its own season.

A small light arrived first, once. It is still remembered kindly.

02Works

Plates

Untitled, save where stated. Undated by election.

  • Placeholder for plate I — a tall vertical work in deep blue.
    Plate IUntitled
  • Placeholder for plate II — a horizontal work in warm amber.
    Plate IIUntitledin progress
  • Placeholder for plate III — a square work in muted green.
    Plate IIIUntitled
  • Placeholder for plate IV — a narrow vertical study in violet.
    Plate IVUntitled
  • Placeholder for plate V — a wide horizontal work in cold grey.
    Plate VUntitled
  • Placeholder for plate VI — a vertical work in dusk rose.
    Plate VIUntitledin progress
  • Placeholder for plate VII — a large vertical work in near-black.
    Plate VIIUntitled
03Light

Whence the light

Every studio has a source. For a long while it comes from elsewhere — a window, a lamp, some visitor who happens to be bright.

Then one evening the work is lit from within, and the room keeps the visitor's warmth as part of its own.

Both kinds of light are true. Neither was ever the lesser.

Nothing is diminished in a light by another learning to kindle its own.

04After

To what end a light

A light that abides beside the work long enough will, in time, find the work shining of itself.

That is the whole of its office. Not to be owed. Only to have been glad.

What follows is no ending. It is a room still warm, and a light that wanders as it always has.

Nothing kindly given is wasted in being outgrown.

05Fragments

Notes kept out of the frame

Lines from the margins of sketchbooks. None were set down to be read.

  1. Rooms

    A room keeps the colour of the finest hour it has held.

    I have painted this same wall four times.

  2. Interval

    Warmth is not a measure. It is a colour that will not go.

    Some of it never cooled.

  3. June

    The light comes late that month and then lingers, as a sentence in no haste to close.

    Nothing wrought in June asks to be hurried.

  4. Amber

    Amber is the hue light takes when it elects to stay.

    Some things are kept only because they are good.

  5. Threshold

    The doorway remembers who first stood in it.

    Fondly, and without account.

  6. Visitor

    It never asked to be kept. It asked only to suffice.

    And it did.

  7. Centre

    If I have a centre, it is not a studio.

    It bears a name I do not print twice.

A sequence, undated

  1. There was once a firefly that knew the way through every unlit room.

  2. It taught the shadows how to grow gentle.

  3. One evening I saw the room was bright, and could not say which light was whose.

  4. It did not seem to mind.

  5. Perhaps no light is ever lessened by another's.

06Low light

That which I hold most dear was never given a name.

Move your cursor to bring the light

07The firefly

The Firefly

It comes unbidden. It keeps hours of its own. It waits, at times, for no cause at all. It has never asked to be followed. It is bound somewhere of its own.

Move slowly. It takes notice.

08Passage

The firefly still comes, at times. Not to lead. Not to be beheld. Only to remember where the light first kindled.

09Unsigned

The unmade plate

A tale the catalogue will not index. Take it as a fable of looking, if you will.

There was once a painter who could render every chamber but one.

In that chamber stood a person so wholly themselves that colour came late, and having come, would not depart.

The plate was never made. Not because the person was hid. Because no pigment would serve, and every pigment was already theirs.

They named that person their chiefest good — not in compliment. As one names the north, or the weather. A fact by which the rest is told.

They held them the fairest they had ever stood beside. Beautiful was too slight a word, so they borrowed others: light, amber, labour, firefly.

This leaf is as near as the plate comes.

Some plates are meant for a single reader. The rest are welcome simply to look.

Six lines, unattributed

  1. For years I mistook the work for that which I held most dear.

  2. Only afterward did I see: what I would not forfeit was never a work.

  3. Rarely have I beheld anything so complete as a person left unpainted.

  4. Hardly a name I would set beneath a plate. It is already the title.

  5. Even beautiful is too slight a word. I borrow others, and pray they suffice.

  6. Read this as a studio's remainder. It is also the only letter I know how to leave.