Leaving Space

Nicola Moss, 'The air we breathe, the water we drink'. (Detail) Acrylic on canvas. ©2010.

I started this recent work by layering black on black creating a very subtle silhouette of banksia foliage. The canvas sat like this for a couple of weeks while I considered how much detailed vegetation I would paint over the top. Leaving space within the composition seemed crucial to me. Less is more, but how much less? I find increasingly that composition in many ways holds the key to the outcome of an artwork and how well it works. The placement of each line, mark and shape alters what was there before. There was much shifting in minor amounts of elements in this work, as I found white on black accentuated spaces both comfortable and awkward.

I read a little today about horizontal expansiveness in the composition of traditional Japanese painting, haba. Gary Hickey also writes about indeterminate space long appreciated by Japanese artists. Referred to as yohaku no bi, Gary writes "Artists thus treated non-descriptive areas between forms not as negative space but as a vital entity that existed beyond detail". I have a lot more reading to do, but even a brief skim sparked recognition of an appreciation for the use of space as much as detail.