Tanyah Jackson's Komorebi Paintings Probe Light, Shadow and the Unknown

South African-born, US-based painter Tanyah Jackson builds her practice on a paradox: an image can show less and still reveal more. Her Komorebi collection centers on how light and shadow interact, and on the idea that contrast discloses rather than hides. Into the Unknown, completed in August 2023, is a 48 by 60 inch mixed media acrylic on canvas in which a water path threads through a forest toward growing light whose destination stays obscured. Jackson aimed to evoke standing at the threshold of something not yet visible. The painting was shown alongside 1 Corinthians 2:10–11, a passage about the Spirit searching the deep things of God, which she links to an interior landscape unreachable by surface observation. Trained first in photography and drawing, Jackson initially hoped to study theatre; when that path failed, art became her fallback. A lecturer encouraged her to trust her own way of looking rather than technical facility. Leonardo da Vinci draws her for the range of his curiosity, not his style. In the studio she observes and waits before painting, then builds in layers until the canvas acquires its own atmosphere. She now wants a sustained body of work exploring light, darkness, water, thresholds and presence.