pieterlategansketchbook: January 2026

The Priest — Pieter Lategan, 2026

Working Notes / Visual Studies

Purpose of This Page

This page is part of my working sketchbook. It is a place where I collect ideas, visual thoughts, and references while they are still raw and unfinished. It is not a gallery of completed work. It is an archive of things that catch my eye and stay with me — shapes, objects, surfaces, and moments that may later grow into drawings, designs, or artworks.

These images are here to help me think, not to explain anything yet.

What These Photos Are About

The photographs come from a single session or from related observations. They show objects, forms, textures, and arrangements that interest me because of how they sit in space and how they relate to each other.

What draws me here is not decoration or story, but:

weight
balance
repetition
distance
structure
presence

The feeling is quiet, observational, and structural. I am looking at how forms exist, how they hold space, and how they create tension or calm simply by being there.

Questions I Am Working With

These are the questions I carry into the next drawing or design session:

What is the visual relationship between these forms? (weight, balance, repetition, spacing)
Can these references become compositional studies for drawings, paintings, or bag designs?
Are there patterns or structures starting to appear that I want to develop further?
Which images carry feeling or atmosphere without needing words, just through form and composition?

Toward a Personal Discipline

This page points toward a way of working that is becoming clearer to me:

Simplifying observed forms into quieter, more structural compositions
Focusing on presence rather than illustration
Letting shape, weight, and spacing do the work instead of narrative
Building a visual language that is calm, restrained, and consistent

Rather than telling stories, I am interested in how forms stand, how they relate, and how they hold space.

Work in Progress — January 2026

This is a working page. These images are not conclusions. They are material for future drawings, designs, and studies — especially for my bag designs and related work.

They are starting points:

Explorations in form, structure, balance, and visual logic that will slowly develop into a clearer and more disciplined practice.

More notes, sketches, and reflections will follow as this work grows.

Image 1

Close-up photograph taken from beneath a glass chandelier, showing repeated diamond-cut glass forms reflecting warm yellow light with minimal visible background.

Title: Suspended Glass Chandelier — Pattern, Light, and Perception

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saturday 31 January 2026

This close-up photograph was taken from directly beneath a glass chandelier to isolate pattern, repetition, and light. Identical diamond-cut glass elements refract electric light into warm yellow tones, creating shifting reflections and visual motifs. By reducing background context, the chandelier becomes abstract — read less as an object and more as a sculptural light composition driven by structure, repetition, and illumination.

Image 2

$Photograph taken from below a round glass chandelier featuring diamond-cut glass elements that reflect and refract light, creating rich patterns and a sense of luxury.$

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saturday 31 January 2026

Round Glass Chandelier — Diamond Cut Light Structure

This photograph captures a round glass chandelier viewed from below, emphasizing symmetry, repetition, and the precision of diamond-cut glass elements. The electric light source activates the glass surfaces, producing layered reflections and intricate light patterns. Although each glass element is identical, their interaction with light creates variation and visual richness, transforming the chandelier into a sculptural study of structure, luxury, and illuminated form.

Image 3

Close-up photograph of chandelier glass elements illuminated by light, showing abstract patterns and reflections with no visible background.

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saturday 31 January 2026

Glass Pattern Abstraction — Light Detail Study

A tightly framed study of chandelier glass and light, where the camera’s close perspective and lighting transform the familiar object into an abstract pattern. The strong play of light and reflections makes the glass feel like a design element in its own right, emphasizing form, rhythm, and luminous structure over context.

Image 4

Close-up photograph of diamond-cut chandelier glass illuminated by light, creating decorative abstract patterns with no background.

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saturday 31 January 2026

Diamond-Cut Glass Light Study — Abstract Chandelier Detail

A tightly framed abstract study of chandelier glass shapes illuminated from within. Because the photo is taken very close to the object, the light plays a major role in transforming the cut glass into decorative patterns and flowing designs that feel more like visual art than a literal object. The focus on texture, reflection, and repetition turns this into a design exploration of light and form.

Series Notes Image 1 - Image 4 — Light as Form (Work in Progress)

This series of images explores how light, glass, and proximity can transform a familiar object into abstract visual design. By photographing chandeliers from below and at very close range, the focus shifts away from the object itself and toward pattern, repetition, reflection, and structure. Diamond-cut glass elements react differently to light depending on angle, distance, and intensity, creating unexpected decorative motifs and new visual rhythms.

The decision to move the camera closer removes background context and allows light to become the primary design tool. What would normally function as interior lighting becomes an abstract study of form, texture, and illumination. Although the glass elements are often identical, light introduces variation, complexity, and movement, turning repetition into visual richness.

These images are not intended as documentation of objects, but as part of an ongoing sketchbook process — a way of thinking through design, abstraction, and visual language. This body of work remains in progress and serves as a foundation for future explorations in drawing, composition, and material-based design.

Image 5

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saturday 31 January 2026

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saterday 31 January 2026

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saturday 31 January 2026

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saterday 31 January 2026

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saturday 31 January 2026

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Saterday 31 January 2026

Photo by Pieter Lategan - Pretoria South Africa - Sunday 15 February 2026

Photo by Pieter Lategan 23 February 2026 - Title: "Frames in Frames"

Frame for Narrative Monumentalism

Here the frame is not decoration.
It must hold the image like a memory window.

I imagine a deeper frame, almost like a box or a shadow gap, where the painting does not sit on the surface but is set back inside the structure. This creates a distance between the viewer and the image. The edge of the frame becomes a threshold, not just a border.

The effect is important:

The painting feels like something you are looking into, not just looking at.
The space between the frame and the image becomes psychological space.
The viewer feels: I am entering this image with my own thoughts.

This kind of frame supports projection, memory, and interpretation. The meaning does not sit on the surface of the painting. It happens in the space between the viewer and the image.

For materials, I am not thinking about wood at all. I am thinking about glass or metal — something architectural, restrained, and quiet. No ornament. No decoration. Just structure.

This kind of frame supports Narrative Monumentalism because it turns the painting into a place for inner narrative, not a decorative object on a wall.

Floating gallery frame
Narrative Monumentalism Frame designed by Pieter Lategan
24 February 2026

Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

by Pieter Lategan, 2026

On Frames, Presence, and Hiroshima mon amour

For me, Hiroshima mon amour is not just a film. Its opening taught me something important about how images can work before they become a story.

The first minutes of the film are not built like a normal beginning. There is no clear scene, no simple introduction. Instead, there is a sequence of images placed next to each other: fragments, close-ups, ruins, bodies, traces of memory. These images do not explain themselves. They are held next to each other like frames, and only later does meaning begin to form in the viewer.

This way of working is very close to what I am trying to do in my own work.

In my sketchbook notes from January 2026, I am already thinking about form, presence, structure, and how images sit in space. I am not trying to paint stories. I am trying to create conditions where something can be experienced before it is explained.

In Hiroshima mon amour, the images come before understanding. They exist first as presence. Only afterwards does the mind begin to connect them. This is exactly how I think about the painting of The Priest.

The frame of the painting is not just a border. The frame is part of how the image is held in space. The silence around the figure, the emptiness, the distance — all of this is part of the work.

Narrative Monumentalism

If I think about the painting through Narrative Monumentalism, then the priest is not a character in a story that I explain. He becomes a figure onto which the viewer can project their own thoughts.

The space around him becomes a kind of field of memory.

The viewer starts to ask:
Who is he?
Why is he here?
What does his posture say to me?

The meaning does not happen on the canvas. It happens inside the viewer.

This is what I mean by Narrative Monumentalism: the image stands like a monument, and the narrative grows inside the person who looks at it.

Silent Monumentalism

If I approach the painting through Silent Monumentalism, I remove even more. I do not give narrative hints. I do not decorate the space with explanations. I reduce the work to presence.

The priest is not a character in a story.
He is a form in space.
The space around him is not background.
It is part of the work.

Here I don’t ask: “What does this mean?”
I ask: “What does this allow the viewer to experience?”

Silence, distance, weight, stillness.

This is close to what the opening of Hiroshima mon amour does: it lets images exist before they explain themselves. It lets presence come before meaning.

Why this matters for my work

My paintings are not meant to tell stories. They are meant to create a space where presence can be felt.

The posture of the priest, the emptiness around him, the restraint of the composition — these are not narrative elements. They are conditions.

His posture is gravity.
The space is silence.
The lack of story is presence.

Whether I work with Narrative Monumentalism or Silent Monumentalism, the idea stays the same:
Images and forms are not explanations.
They are places where experience can happen.

Read More Click Here:

More ideas for framing my artworks: Pieter Lategan 23 February 2026

Update: |_ 28 February 2026 _| Materials Purchases Journal Priest Pieter Lategan

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“Further process notes are archived separately.”

All text, images, concepts, and drawings on this site are original works by the author.

Silent Monumentalism is presented here as an original artistic discipline.

Silent Monumentalism — Structural Notes (Sketchbook)

Pieter Lategan, 2026

This sketchbook is not a space for finished images.
It is a working field where structure, discipline, and thinking are made visible.

The focus here is not style, but logic.

Core principles under study:

Structure
Load / weight
Support
Repetition
Grounding
Stands / Exists

The movement of the work:

2D → 3D
Figure → object → structure
Less said → more present

The figure is not treated as narrative or emotion,
but as a carrier of weight and mass.

There is no story.
No symbolism.
No emotional instruction.

The form stands.
It exists.

Discipline, not style

Silent Monumentalism is approached here as a discipline-based practice, not as an aesthetic style.
The exterior remains quiet and uniform.
Complexity exists internally — through structure, logic, and function.

These notes are not meant to explain everything.
They document a repeatable method.

Notes on reference

Historical artists and practices are studied here only for structural logic, not for subject matter, narrative, or stylistic quotation.

Reference Notes (Structural Context Only)

Donald Judd — logic before image; objects that stand without metaphor or narrative.
Giorgio Morandi — method and repetition as discipline rather than expression.
Agnes Martin — restraint, rules, and quiet structure over emotion.

These references inform structural thinking only.
No visual quotation, symbolism, or narrative is carried into the final work.