The Importance of Negative Space

The Importance of Negative Space

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            Many years ago I took oil painting classes with Julanne Campbell in Suquamish, Washington. I like everything about painting. Oil painting, water colors, painting the walls of my house. I like the smells of paints and turpentine. I like the feel of the brush stroke against a blank surface. I’m a tactile painter; my fingers often ignore the brush and create a smooth stroke here or a smudge there.

            I don’t spend enough time drawing to be good. But in any endeavor, there are the professionals, the adequate and then there is me. In any group that is ranked, somebody is first and somebody else is last. I’m perfectly willing to be last for the pure pleasure of painting.

            One essential lesson I took from Julanne is the importance of negative space.  The space surrounding the vase of flowers in the still-life is as important as the emerald vase filled with flowers, including the dying rose petal which fell onto the yellow tablecloth.

            Over time I realized that I, consciously or subconsciously, apply the rule of negative space to other aspects of my life. In planning my garden or arranging objects in my patio or in my casita, I consider the object, the placement for effect and the empty space around the object. I think without thinking.

            Yesterday I made the comment to Julie, my newest neighbor on the Rancho, that there is not space in my casa for another person. We had been discussing men in our lives. Women here seem concerned that I have a partner. I suspect one woman is scheming to hook me up with a particular man. Neither of us is interested in a more intimate friendship.

            My life has just the right amount of negative space. I have solitude that I treasure. I am surrounded with beauty. I have raised my children. I have known the love of a good husband. I have kissed a frog or two who turned from prince to pauper. At this stage in my life, I’ll settle for the talking frog, no prince, thank you.

This morning while hanging sheets on the line to dry, I thought about the many families who made a life in a cabin on the Plains and made that life work. My casa is 465 square feet, an opulence of space compared to many homestead cabins. Those cabins, to we of privilege, are in our history. Families are still being raised in smaller spaces.

After hanging my wash, I stood in the middle of my two room house. With a smidgeon of imagination and judicious rearrangement, I can see a table with benches, cots instead of couch and chairs; bookshelves become dressers. Room for a mate and four children to live in relative comfort. Luxury with indoor shower and flush toilet.

I surprised myself at how easily I could make these purely imaginary adjustments. 

These last several days I’ve crammed my “space”, space being more than physical surroundings, with activities with friends, trips to the Plaza, to San Marcos, to Tequila. In the summertime, by contrast, I’m often the only gringa on the Rancho.   

Taking advantage of opportunity, I started a writing group, Tuesday evenings. Five people from the Rancho and one woman from town showed up, nervous, curious, all non-writers, willing to try something different. My intention is purely selfish. I miss my old groups. Our format is simple.  We grab a topic out of thin air. Pencil to paper, no crossing out, no fixing, no hesitations, write for ten minutes. Our first topic—Black boots. We read aloud what we wrote. My friends surprised themselves (but not me) with their brilliance.  

Restlessly, I’ve been thinking, wanting, resisting putting a regular meditation practice back into my life. Why did I drop meditation? A combination of stubbornness and laziness. I don’t want to talk about it.

Since I feel a need for that kind of formal negative space, and now that I’ve shared my need with you, I suppose I’ll have to quit procrastinating and just do it.

I’m not holy. I’m flawed and human. No shaven head, no saffron robes, no exotic chants. Fifteen minutes to start is easily doable. Today? Sheesh. Not tomorrow? Today? Right now? Okay, okay. I’ll do it. Sheesh.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 26, 2017

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Life Lessons at the Point of a Paint Brush—A Little Dab Will Do You

Life Lessons at the Point of a Paint Brush—A Little Dab Will Do You

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About a month ago, after a hiatus of several years, I began painting. I hadn’t meant to give it up for so long. I missed the feel of the wooden brush between my fingers. I love to grab globs of oil paint and smear the paint onto stretched canvas. I like the sound the brush makes, the soft sweep. I like the smell of turpentine. It is thrilling to watch the first lines form into recognizable shapes and objects.

When I am painting, something magical happens. The process takes me over and will not let me go. The clock quits ticking. I forget to comb my hair. I miss meetings. I forget to eat. With three brushes in my hand, I scratch my nose and give a whole new meaning to face painting. I reach out with my finger to smooth a line. Absently, I wipe my finger on my shirt. Later I see that I have ruined my second best shirt.

Are you any good, a friend asked. It doesn’t matter. It’s not important whether I’m good or not. I paint because it’s fun. Every canvas is my teacher and that’s a bonus.

Let me explain. Sometime in the last century I realized I had missed a lot in life. For years, I was hesitant to join in any activity unless I knew I would excel or at least do a tolerably good job. I sat on the sidelines and made excuses. I’m busy. I don’t enjoy that kind of thing. I don’t have time. I’ve got too much on my plate. Maybe later, I’d mumble. I thought that to try and not do well revealed some sort of character flaw. I would find myself almost paralyzed thinking about the risk. It was excruciating. So I didn’t try.

I suffered from a twisted flaw in my thinking. I felt no competitive need to be the best. But I was afraid to fail. I admired others for getting out there and doing, regardless. Until one day I had a light bulb moment. Someone’s first. Someone’s second. Someone’s last. It is a mathematical certainty.

That simple understanding freed me. Now I could try new things. I gathered my courage, said to myself, remember, somebody has to be last. I’m willing to be last in this new thing.

And that enabled me to paint. I don’t have to be invested in the outcome. I took a few lessons several years ago. But life kept interfering. You know how that is. I painted maybe a dozen pictures over four or five years. Some were hopeless and landed in the landfill. But when I finished one that showed promise, I framed it.

So last week I took two paintings for framing to the High Plains Gallery and Frame Shop. One is an arrangement of jelly jars and the other an interior scene with a balcony overlooking the sea. I had another painting, a still life I wanted critiqued. I had gone as far as I could go with it. I liked the individual parts, but as a whole, the painting didn’t work. I needed help. I took a deep breath and showed it. Do you know how hard that was? This was my creation, my baby. And I was asking that my work be judged. I was willing to risk the possibility that an expert would say it’s no good, that she would trash it, and by extension, trash me. But I remembered, it is okay to finish the race dead last. Even when I lose, I win.

I could tell Kellie was hesitant. “You can tell me if I should just throw it away,” I told her. “Be honest. I can take it.”

She pulled out an easel and set my canvas on it. “I like this and this and this,” she said.

“Me too. So, tell me why the whole thing doesn’t work.”

“Well, the wall in the background needs to have a corner about here. And you might want to make the walls darker, so the foreground pieces aren’t lost. You need to bring the light around from the other side. And make the shadows deeper.” She said some other stuff too, but that was all I could retain. As I left the shop Kellie called out, “Keep painting.”

So I took my baby back home and repainted the background. I brought the light around from the opposite side and added a corner. Which meant I had to repaint the figures in the foreground; in other words, I changed everything. Kellie was right. Now it works.

As soon at the paint dries, I’ll take it in to be framed. Next I’d like to do a winter landscape of my cabin in the snow-filled yard. I’ll keep painting. This is fun.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 7, 2013
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The Ice Age Creepeth

The Ice Age Creepeth

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It’s easy to become downcast in winter, even as mild a winter as this, thus far, knock on wood, salt over shoulder, sign of the cross. I try to keep an upbeat attitude, but sometimes . . .

One seemingly ordinary day last week, I had a fright. The day started as usual: snow fall in the morning filled in my footprints and cat tracks of the day previous, a shout of afternoon sunshine, a bit of breeze. A good day, a good mild winter’s day, a day to bless and fill with murmurings of gratitude if not outright songs of praise. You get the picture.

In my warm and cozy house I had a canvas propped on the easel, paints on my palette and all the tools to paint a still life. At the same time I was immersed in three books, an Icelandic mystery by Indridison, poetry by Mary Oliver, and another book by Richard Hugo. Simultaneously I was tightening a batch of my own poems that I had left to simmer and cook down to their essence. Oh, and I had a pot of soup on the burner. I moved easily from canvas to book to keyboard to book to stir the soup and around again. Yes, a good day, indeed.

When I’m working, I go to my window seventeen times a day to look out over the hills across the valley, a view that refreshes me. But what was that? That creepy mysterious thing? That ominous line of luminescent white stuff which pulsed over the top of the hills? I watched, my feet glued in place. It, whatever it was, got bigger. It was whiter than white. It seemed alive. It seemed to glow from within like an intergalactic menace from a 1950’s sci-fi creature movie. It looked like a tsunami of ice, edging closer, threatening to carve the hills, grind them down and push them into town. I felt sure there was no stopping the on-coming disaster. Surely the next phase of glaciation was upon us, and with no warning. Global warming, indeed!

But, I hoped, if I hurried, I might flee to safety, somewhere far, far south.

The phone rang, a friend from Pender Island in British Columbia. “I’ve got the flu,” Kathy said. “I think I might die.”

“The flu? Is that all.” I said back. “I’m at my window watching the next Ice Age creep over the hills and down toward town. It’s eerie—a wall of ice, roiling with all the boulders in Canada. It’s headed straight for me. I’m going to jump in my van and race south as fast as I can go. In fact, I was headed out to warm up the car when you called. Oh, bother, it’s getting closer. Look, if I hadn’t answered the phone, I know I could have outrun the glacier. Now it’s iffy. But I’m glad you called. We get to say good-by.”

“Ice age, hmmm. Aren’t you afraid of saber toothed tigers?”

“Naaa. Alpha cat that I am, saber toothed tigers hold no fear for me. But I do worry about the wooly mammoths. I’ve always been afraid of wooly mammoths, ever since I was a child and had nightmares about them. To this day I have to cover my hands and feet and ears when I go to bed or I can’t sleep. The wooly mammoths might get me.”

“I see,” she said. “Have you thought about mastodons?”

“I try not to think about mastodons. Aren’t they extinct?”

“Does that make any difference?”

“Kathy, the glacier is grinding closer. I’ll call you from Denver. Give my love to Richard. Stay warm and drink lots.”

What with one thing and another, by the time I shut off the water, turned the furnace down, coaxed the cat from beneath the sofa, grabbed some books, located my passport, snatched my sock of money from beneath the mattress, and threw a change of underwear in my bag, whew, the glacier had gone. I don’t know where it went—just—gone .

I felt astounded. Clear horizon, the hills stolid in place, sky cerulean blue, a top hat of wispy cloud. I went back to my books and painting, but kept a weather eye to the north.

That night, I slept uneasy, what with wooly mammoths and hairy mastodons about. When I woke at my usual hour the next morning, there was no light in the room. None. It was dark as inside a stovepipe. I knew it—I just knew it—my house lay buried beneath that sneaky glacier. I should have gone to Denver.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 10, 2012
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