Negative space. I am increasingly aware of it.  As an artist I see what is there just as much as I see what is not there. That is how you paint. You make the shape that exists just as much as the shape left around it.  Lately I see negative space everywhere. I see it in leaf patterns across sky, in the empty seat at the dinner table, I hear it in conversation, the thing that isn’t said…reading the words omitted. I feel the weight of what is missing. Silence against song. The power is the same.  There is (of course) a negative connotation to the word negative and yet negative space to me is so wholly positive. It is the other side, the twin thought, the wonder filled invisible miracle that can be seen only when it is rubbing against the visible.  For me, in tragic moments the negative space is a comfort…It is how I carry my sad stories and my dead.

Stuck in time they carve out an indelible space in the landscape of my being. Not just unforgettable but actually making up the experience of Living.  Here with me always as they were.

I hesitate posting this. I don’t know if it might rub someone the wrong way, be too dark or too corny That is my fear… that it is trite in the face of tragedy.  Like much of the world, I have been struggling the past few days with how to mourn while living.  How to celebrate life when you feel like hunkering in?  The drawing above is what came out when I put pen to paper. I can’t title it.