Negative Space

Tomorrow I will be at the hospital having my first, and hopefully only, major surgery.

One of the things you must do prior to surgery, especially during the Covid19 pandemic, is isolate yourself fully. Like everyone else, I’m tired of feeling isolated and holed up. I decided that one of the things I could do is walk outdoors by myself.

In the previous newsletter I shared the painting I just finished. In a perfect world I would have another idea lined up and ready to go. But, in my imperfect world, I had no idea what I’d like to paint next. After spending a little time on the existential thoughts that sometimes creep into my head, such as, “why am I painting at all,” I decided to press forward and draw a bit while I work on my next painting idea.

My desire to get outside and walk in the woods and the need to find something that I wanted to draw came together. I packed a sketchbook and drawing tools into an old leather purse, slung it over my shoulder, and headed out on a walk into the woods at the local park.

As I walked I kept an eye out for something I might want to draw. It was a weekday so the park wasn’t overly crowded, but there were a number of people.

Near the beginning of the trail were two ladies, each with a small fluffy dog on a leash. The one woman had a slow, stiff-hipped, rocking gait that I recognized from a previous walk. Her friend walked a few paces ahead, I imagine in an effort to distance herself. Neither were wearing masks. The woman in the rear kept up a steady chatter at a volume that I’m certain I could’ve heard if I’d stayed home. I rushed past them, taking a cutoff I thought would allow me to escape the gossipy cacophony. It didn’t work. The winding path kept me just close enough that I couldn’t quickly escape. My nerves snapped and frayed with the effort to keep away from these people, and their intrusive noise during a time when I was trying to de-stress. As you might imagine, walking through the wooded path muttering through clenched teeth, “Just shut the [BLEEP] up!” was less than relaxing.

I finally power-walked a good distance away and finally reached one of my favorite areas, a wooded glen with fallen moss-covered trees and a sun-dappled forest floor. I walked off the path into a leaf strewn area where young leaves grew on slender branches. These young saplings spoke to me of new life springing out of the remnants of older trees, crunchy dried leaves from last fall. It reminded me of my desire for renewal and healing in my own body. So, this is what I decided to draw.

I sat on a moss-covered log and first drew the young leaves. I tried drawing with my non-dominant hand, going for a loose contour. I didn’t want the drawing to be too tight. One of the leaves I drew, though, was so misshapen that it was beyond loose and into the surreal, so I decided to camouflage my errant mark by drawing the dead leaves around the young leaves.

I worked like this for some time, perhaps an hour and a half, eventually realizing my posterior was becoming painfully numb, but I continued on, hearing only the birds and insects and the occasional person passing quietly by. I enjoyed the meditative process of cross hatching and squiggling in the shapes of the fallen leaves. I could feel the stress evaporate.

It wasn’t till later that evening as I contemplated the drawing that it came to me that I am in a negative space, cycling through bouts of anxiety, agitation and raw nerves as I deal with the impending surgery. What I’d done with this drawing was develop what is normally the negative space around the focal objects, and left the objects themselves mostly blank, thus reversing the negative space such that it is the focal point.

This simple drawing now held meaning for me, both because of the structure and in content: the young and old leaves symbolic of the loss of my young resilient body, replaced over time with this aging, deteriorating one.

Over the past week I’ve drawn several more of these “negative space” drawings, each one with a special meaning to me. And so it is that I began with no idea of what to draw, and ended with a daily healing ritual that has sustained me in the lead-up to a challenging event.

I feel fortunate that I have my artistic practice and remind myself that this process of discovery is why I make art. It is both therapeutic for me, and I hope, for other people with whom I share my artwork.