The most abundant thing in the universe is nothing.

            Atoms consist of miniscule electrons and slightly larger nuclei.  Between the two is a vast amount of empty space. If you could remove that space from, say, a large stone wall, the amount of actual matter left over, wouldn’t fill a teaspoon.

            However, that substance would be so incredibly heavy that it would crush and vaporize the spoon and the earth below it. That concentrated matter would continue to sink through miles of layers, until it found equilibrium at the center of the earth.

            That little speculation, however, is moot, because the energy released from breaking apart all those atoms would create an explosion of unimaginable size.  Some conclusions emerge from this little exercise:  Everything in the universe, even the lifeless stone, is crazy with activity. Electrons are spinning around the nuclei so fast that they appear as solid spheres. The stone’s solidity is the product of that speed.  We depend on all that nothingness to give shape to our world, spacing out the matter so it can be rocks or water or people.  Without all that emptiness, there would be no world. Nothing is really something!

            I like to think about these things as I look around. If I’m painting a scene, it’s not made up of static objects, but is instead a moving landscape of vibrating structures. That certainly makes painting interesting!

 

            There is something fascinating about looking at our everyday world and imagining the energy pulsating in the leaves, vibrating with unseen frequencies. How can an artist paint all that?  Many have tried.  Van Gogh comes to mind.   The structure of atoms was unknown at his time, but perhaps he sensed the frenetic activity inside of everything.  His paintings appear to capture something of that wild energy.

            When an artist lifts the brush and begins to paint, he or she is calling on many different things, all at the same time. Whether it’s an abstract painting or a representational one, there is exploration in every stroke.  The colors, pure or blended, evoke the childhood joy of interacting with paint and the powerful feeling that comes with expression.

            There was nothing on the canvas before, just empty blankness. Now, through the experienced hand, or the hesitant one, or even the youthful one of a child, the act of painting is to create something out of nothing.

            That term, “expression,” is an interesting one. What, exactly are we so intent on expressing on the blankness of canvas?  I’ve pondered this over the years, in fact I named the class I teach, Painting with Expression, and yet what is it that we want so much to express?

            I’ve come around to believing that we want to somehow portray the experience of ‘us’, the reality of being alive.  We want to set down what we’re feeling, whether it’s fear, anxiety, loneliness, joy, excitement, or even, being in love.  Faced with the certainty that our lives will end, we defiantly attempt in paint, to revolt against the nothingness we will become.

 

            I try, in my work, to capture something of the world around me. The arrangement of people and objects that occupy space at that moment, is constantly changing.  I take pictures to capture it all, but it’s my drawings or paintings where I interpret today’s arrangement, that hold the most meaning.  Perhaps I’m trying to keep the pleasures of this moment in time from slipping away into nothing.