I have been working on this series for several years. Referencing the landscape of the Big Sur Coast of California I reduce the experience of living on the Central Coast to the elements of color, light, motion and simplified form.

        The study of color came several years into the practice of painting. I started my creative life as a black and white photographer and viewed the world in shades of gray, the contrast of light and dark values forming the skeleton of the composition. Color, while I was learning to paint was seen in terms of those same light and dark values. As my method evolved I became interested in color for its own sake, especially for the exploration of its emotional impact. 

         More important than color is light. We conduct our daily activities according to its presence or absence. Cyclical in nature, the quantity changes over the course of a day and more broadly, throughout the seasons. Thoughts about illuminations recur repeatedly in our speech. We often want to "see something in a different light," someone or something comes into existence when they are "seen in the light of day," we hope for "the light at the end of the tunnel." Sunlight is consumed directly by plants and indirectly by animals. I have a personal relationship with light first as a photographer and then as a medical professional working with laser machines. I live in a rural area of the Big Sur Coast. Besides painting I spend my days gardening, clearing brush and tending to farm animals. The weather and environmental conditions are extremely important to my daily existence. Is the sun too hot to carry things up and down the hill? Where and what time does it set? What is the temperature and how will it change the consistency of my paint?

         The paintings in the Color and Light series reference the light of the California Coast. Tiny water particles in the atmosphere disperse the light which creates diffuse images. The horizon line of the ocean is usually indistinct with one color seamlessly blending into another. The quality of light has a complex effect on how we experience the world around us. The combination of light and color evokes a deep emotional response in the viewer.

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         Heidi Hybl was born in Chicago. She grew up wandering the galleries of the Art Institute. She studied art at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Monterey Peninsula College. Her early professional life was in the field of medicine; biology continues to inform her work. Hybl has had many solo exhibits. She has shown her work in juried and group exhibits and received awards. She has taught art to children and adults and served on the Board of Directors of Artists' Equity and the Big Sur Arts Initiative. She interviewed artists on Public Radio. She currently paints full time in her studio in Big Sur.