I Need Some Negative Space!

I've been thinking today about how my life needs more "negative space".

In art, negative space is the quiet area of a piece of work. It is the shadow space, the blank paper, or the area that has little or no detail. Negative space creates a place for the eye to rest. It enhances the experience and/or subject of the work.

If you go to one of my first posts, "Meet My Sketchbook", you will see how instead of crowding my pages with creative explosions, I like to leave much of the paper empty. This choice in my drawing first began accidentally. I once drew a tiny picture of three musicians on larger paper. The plan was to crop it down after I drew it. But once the drawing was complete, I realized that the space around them was perfect! It was like the musicians needed that space in order to fill it with their music! If I didn't leave the musicians "breathing room", it wouldn't have the same feeling, it would simply be a small representation of musicians.

For the "starving artist" what often occurs is that it requires work-work-work, create-create-create in order to pull it together to survive and be able to be an artist at all. The pages of my life have no quiet spaces. Besides painting and drawing, I work as a salon receptionist. I also pick up other random jobs to meet needs such as socks or immediate necessary car repairs. Why is it that I have trouble focusing on my art? Where did my energy for creating go? It's because there are no negative spaces in my life. The sketchbook pages of my life are crowded, busy, and messy. There is no room for the music. When I sit to work, I feel the pressures of time and other commitments that I need to meet. I need the negative space to give me a place to rest and pull together my experiences, who I am, and what I may have to offer others through my work. Then when I do have my tools in hand and meet my medium, I can focus on what is before me and freely commit myself to it.

Several years ago my friend bought the drawing I described, I will try to see if I have an image of it somewhere to share. Somewhat related is this little poem I wrote for my friend before passing the work onto him, entitled As the Flute:

Created to be empty
But not to be bereft
Created to be filled
With our maker's breath

Could your life need more negative space, too?

Papers everywhere!

Nicole must be doing illustrations for Bright Ideas Press again!

I'm Back!

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I promise I haven't been lazy since my last post! I had a large undertaking of a painting that was a suprize gift. (the painting is 30 x 40") This took up all my art time for a few months, so I had no other work to report back on this blog! Now that the suprize is over, here is the painting! It was part of a proposal gift. Instead of painting the actual couple in a proposal scene that hadn't happened for them, I decided to have a couple that looked similar to the original couple. This way the painting would be more about the relationship and experience than the physical representation of the couple. I chose the environment as a sort of indoor picnic (minus the food), to keep the lighting and space intimate. Also, instead making this an on one knee sort of scene, which would have communicated "Marry me!!" I chose to make this less about performance and more about relationship. While this is a moment of importance, her hand is in two of his, but the words you may imagine are deeper and more complex than "marry me". Their expressions say something more like, "I want to be with you now and always."
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Congratualtions Jen and Zev. :-)