
January 15, 2025
This essay came about when I could not find the time to rework the painting linked to the essay. All I wanted to do was add more negative space by covering over a portion of the marsh in the right bottom corner of the canvas. Yet “all I wanted to do” seemed impossible because other aspects of life kept interfering. My life, just like my painting, needed more negative space. I gave the painting what it needed; and resolved to do the same to my life.
Finding Negative Space: Not A Resolution Just a Way of Being in 2025
Negative space is not, as it sounds, gloomy and pessimistic. In art, negative space is very positive, defining subjects and providing visual balance. Technically negative space is empty space but empty, as used here, does not mean insignificant or unimportant. Negative space unifies a composition’s disparate parts and helps the viewer make sense of the composition. The viewer’s eyes find a place to rest in negative space.
I experience the pleasure of negative space every year when I clear away holiday decorations. When the tangible is removed, I am greeted with a new view and my home seems more spacious and restful. Air and lightness fill what is otherwise an empty, but significant, space.
This year I plan to use the idea of negative space to define what is essential and find balance in my life. When the extraneous bits fall away, I won’t gain any more time, and I may even have to attend to some of the culled pieces at a later date, but in the immediate I’ll feel, and be able to breathe, easier. I’ll invite the air and lightness in and put away, even for a time, what feels out of place.
Maybe the artful concept of negative space will help me live more artfully this year; and maybe with perseverance, finding negative space in my life will become not a resolution for the new year, it will become a way of being in 2025.