These new paintings emerged out of studies begun during a residency at Ballinglen Arts Foundation, County Mayo, Ireland during summer 2007, and continued through 2008 in a period of exploration and development, supported by a Scottish Arts Council Creative Development Award. His recent work, developed over the past decade, is primarily concerned with the creation of an illusion of light. Using monochrome painting as a model these works explored the impossibility of perfection and were rooted in a questioning of the desire for purity, whether aesthetic or ideological. During the Ballinglen residency Lumsden began to explore the use of acrylic paint and gloss medium. In place of the subtle tonal blending of the recent oil paintings he began to build contrasting layers of translucent paint. The process involves the application of multiple layers of paint on a finely sanded gesso ground. Each layer is dragged, pulled or squeegeed with various implements – the process being repeated, layer upon layer until the final painting begins to emerge. Arrived at by both chance and deliberation, this final painting reveals the varying and contrasting colours and underlayers, which can be seen through the translucence, pentimenti and depth of the work. The series Liquid Light continues the formal compositional simplicity of the earlier works, yet the restrained minimalism of these earlier works has given way to works of greater richness and depth, to seductive surfaces rich in incident. Lumsden has become interested in how the depiction of light and space, emotional depth and feeling can be rendered through process, controlled chance and accident, within the application of paint. The artist aims to make paintings which are luminous, seductive, sensual, and atmospheric. He is fascinated in how the basic materials innate to the medium – stretcher, linen, pigment suspended in medium – can be turned from raw material into something poetic, enigmatic; an object imbued with light, feeling and emotion. The struggle lies in attempting to reach that stage.