Nothingness

Teachers hear so many things from children that it is difficult to surprise them.  But every so often a student says something so remarkably insightful or so incredibly stupid that a teacher’s face shows palpable amazement.  I put that look on a teacher’s face once with a statement that was not really clever or silly.  My seventh grade history teacher Mrs. Eddas (I think) had just finished a lesson.  There was some time left before class was over.  Mrs. Eddas asked the class what we should do next.  I don’t remember what our likely choices were.  There might have been some kind of history trivia we played.  Maybe quiet study time; maybe a quick film; maybe a preview of the next chapter.  I said, “let’s do nothing.”  Mrs. Eddas claimed she had never heard of a child wanting to do nothing.  Apparently children were constantly in states of motion, noise and need.  I probably didn’t mean literally nothing, which is basically impossible to do.  And while I recall Mrs. Eddas’s reaction, I don’t recall exactly my motivation.  Was it just my laziness?  Or was my mindfulness advanced far beyond my years?   Now that my time is all my own, I think I spend far too much time doing nearly nothing. 

I think nothing is one of those totally illusive things.  Where you think there is nothing, there is a vacuum, or space, or a back hole.  There is silence or inactivity.  There is a secret or something you forgot. 

There are all kinds of rules about composition, applying to photographs as well as drawings and paintings.  One must have a focal point.  The focal point can’t be dead-center, and it can’t be falling off the edge of the page.  There will also be visual elements of secondary interest.  There must be contrast, particularly in values, but also in shapes and edges.  The composition must lead your eyes back into the picture.  Artists, however, are rule-breakers.  Furthermore, there aren’t really art police.   There are only other artists and observers of art.  So you will see works of art that depict nothing identifiable, works of art that are as minimal as a single dot or line, and pure White Paintings.  Paintings of nothingness.

 A picture need not be a picture of something.  When I stare into space, and someone asks me what I’m looking at, I respond “nothing.”  Much as you might catch me thinking of nothing.  But of course there’s something in front of me and my eyes are open and the image on my retina sends signals to my brain.  I think this painting is a little of the nothingness I might look into.  Not to say I don’t think it’s beautiful; I do.  It follows rules of composition, I think; the focal point is an empty space.  Honestly I didn’t even remember where it was, although I do remember sitting on a slope beneath a tree.  I think it was Deukmajian Park, but it might be Devil’s Gate Dam.  The sky looks like any kind of weather could happen, and the grass could be tall or minute, the hill slope steep or tiny.  I think I know why I painted it, but there’s nothing that you would guess at.