The light through the glass In the workshops of Utrecht, the days began with the careful handling of colored glass. Before he was a painter, Bart van der Leck spent years as an apprentice, learning how light passes through bounded planes of color. This early work in stained glass left a mark on his hands and his eyes. He learned to see the world not as a collection of soft edges, but as a series of distinct, unmodulated shapes. When he eventually moved to Amsterdam to study at the State School of Arts and Crafts and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, he brought this discipline with him…