Above: December. Twilight. Mixed media on wood. 16 x16 inches. Rose Strang 2026
Let’s talk about photosensitive retinal ganglion cells …
Or, the cryptochromes within our eyes: ancient, blue-light-sensitive proteins found throughout nature (in plants, insects, birds, and humans) which help regulate our circadian rhythm.
It’s proven science that they affect our sleep and waking patterns, but we humans find poetry in everything. Dawn and dusk, the gloaming, the blue hour, these (sorry for the overused term) liminal states. Places between heaven and earth, or thresholds.
Ancient shamen knew that these were powerful times of day to unleash our imagination. I know of no other contemporary singer / musician who explores these dream states better than Kate Bush.
“Somewhere in a dream between sleep and waking up / Somewhere in between breathing out and breathing in / Like twilight is neither night nor morning.”
I listened to two of her tracks in particular while painting these, though it was more about mood than literal interpretation: First Snowflake, written in 2010, about a falling snowflake destined to meet its beginning or end as it approaches the earth, also a metaphor for the transient, delicate voice of a choir boy, namely Kate Bush’s (then) 13 year old son who sings the song with her on the track, with it’s open shimmering piano arpeggios, suggesting a falling sensation, while Kate Bush sings the repeated, reassuring refrain Keep falling, I’ll find you
The other song, December Will Be Magic Again, was written in 1979 by Kate Bush when she was just 21. The theme is, again, falling in a night sky at Christmas, but here it’s the song of a young woman hoping that December will be magic, as it was when she was a child:
December will be magic againDon’t miss the brightest starKiss under mistletoeI want to hear you laughDon’t let the mystery go now
Thankfully, the song was never made very famous, and so it remains probably the only underplayed Christmas themed song I know that truly does make me feel the magic of this time of year!
I was also thinking of Arthur Melville’s dream-like paintings, ochre buildings against velvet blue skies, or Whistler’s Nocturnes. The deeper side of these winter reveries conjured up my more spiritual Vesper paintings, but they also conjured December, midnight, twilight, Christmas magic and the more childlike side of imagination maybe, in these December paintings.
Twilight shifts your brain out of high-alert, logical daytime processing and drops it into a more fluid, receptive, alpha-wave state. The blue hour l’heure bleue, twilit haunting perfumes, iris pallida’s papery petals, Vespers, evening prayers, mood indigo, ancient druidic rituals around a fire. A time when we no longer rely on what we see, but rather what we imagine with our mind’s eye and feel with our heart and soul. Visions; come to sparkle the dark up.
These two paintings don’t yet have a destination, I painted them spontaneously. I’ll update when I know where they’ll be placed.
In the meantime. here are two videos; December Will be Magic Again and Snowflake
Kate Bush released this video for Snowflake to accompany the animation called Little Shrew. The two were created to raise money for WAR CHILD which exists to help children around the world affected by war
