A juxtaposition of darkness and light characterises Easter: for Christians this celebration marks the Resurrection of Jesus three days after his death by crucifixion and therefore a moment of joyful triumph after Lenten, a season of fasting and penitence, and after the sorrows of the Holy Week. But, Easter time is also often marked by the last Winter snow, by heavy rains and cold temperatures, unpleasant weather conditions that often put us in a bad mood, casting a proverbial dark cloud on this Spring holiday.
Caspar David Friedrich's "Easter Morning" (1833) painting (from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum collection), embodies this sort of dichotomy between darkness and light.
In the painting women are going to the place where Jesus was buried, located outside the city, carrying jars with spices and balm to care for Jesus' body.
The lower half of the canvas portrays mortality and is plunged into a mourning atmosphere: it is late Winter, early in the morning, and it is cold, you can guess it from the misty landscape and the clothes of the women, who, motionless and portrayed from behind standing between bare trees, are wearing warm shawls and cloaks. You can almost imagine the silence all around them, hanging over the rocky landscape like a mourning veil.
Yet Friedrich often charged his contemplative landscapes with profound religious significance, hiding in them important and rich symbols: in this case, the mist is mystical (pun unintended), and, while the luminous moon is standing high in the sky marking death, the dawn, symbol of eternal life, is arriving, ready to dispel the night and announce that Jesus has risen, marking the return of hope. Just like the winter will soon give way to the spring, light will replace darkness, and life will win over death. 
The main palette for this painting, though, is drenched in dark tones, so where could we turn to for unusual light inspirations? Well, check out Frank Lloyd Wright's glass panels from the B. Harley Bradley House, Kankakee, Illinois (on of them is currently part of the "Modern America: The Wolf Family Collection" auction at Sotheby's).
The B. Harley Bradley House (also known as "Glenlloyd") is a major transitional work that marks the beginning of Wright's Prairie style.
The exterior finishes of the house featured low-slung roofs, stucco and dark wood and bands of windows encircling the house like a necklace. The architect's most vivid glass works for the residence were six panels hung above the dining room table. In opalescent clear and rippled glass and lead came, the panels were characterized by ambers, yellows, and golden shades.
The design of the illuminated panels is extremely advanced with an exceptionally elaborate and sophisticated pattern: the triangular theme in the panels is alternated to fine lines forming rectangular motifs. The interweaving of rectangular pieces throughout the design is immaculately and painstakingly designed and executed.
While Wright left no commentary about the origin of the pattern, some historians noticed a Native-American influence in this design.
The lead was unusual in the Bradley windows since, though traditional for stained-glass windows, in this case it may have succumbed under its own weight and that of the glass it supported, so it was reinforced with steel backing bars to stretch the width, an expedient that added rigidity to the panel and transferred the weight to the frame.
Juxtapositions of darkness and light have always been inspiring in fashion collections and both the works included in this post could lead to contrasting palettes, ideal maybe for yarns (imagine a collection of browns and beiges with sparkles of soft orange and salmon pink derived from Friedrich's painting, and of orange, yolk and golden yellows borrowed from the laylight), but Frank Lloyd Wright's illuminated panel could also be used as the starting point for geometrically intricate knitwear designs. Whatever you decide to create maybe getting inspired by these two works, make sure that the darkness vs light is dichotomy is at play.