Did you ever notice that someone can mention one little idea, and your mind just takes flight? Maybe it was just a hint of an idea they had, and they share it with you, and your imagination immediately grabs hold of something and off it goes. I’ve observed that sometimes it’s what they said. Other times it’s not what they said. It’s what they didn’t say.
If they had kept talking and not stopped, the moment would have been lost. If they had laid out the whole thing before you, that would have been it. Over. Done. Nothing else to think about. But because they left space to think, your imagination latched onto something, and the ideas gushed in like a flood.
I love to visit art museums. They are a well spring of creativity. The colors are better than wine for my thirsty palette. Lines, form, medium, and color stir my right brain like a recipe for nectar. But it’s not only those elements that intrigue me so. It is also the white space on the canvas or on the watercolor paper. The white space is where the painting or the drawing is not. And where the art is not is where the imagination fills in the blanks.
The place I notice white space the most is on watercolor paintings where the artist did his or her artistic magic right up to the edge of the message and stopped. They didn’t finish the edge. They left the edge to the mind of the viewer. The viewer looks at that edge and wonders: what goes there? What would I put there? Why did the painter stop? Somebody hand me a brush, and I’ll finish this!
I’ve often thought that is why God gave us silence. He didn’t want to tell us everything. It would have left our imagination hanging out there with nothing to do. As it is the silences in the artwork of our lives are white spaces where God stopped and said, “There. Now you finish the painting.” He wanted our imaginations to come to silence, pause for a moment, and ponder what might belong in that white space. If He had told us the answer there would be no need to stop and think at all. As it is we can be creative. We have free will and experiences to draw from. We can create the painting of our life with brilliant color or with dark color. We can create beauty or tragedy. But the artwork is ours.
How do we know what the painting of our life should look like unless we stop and contemplate the white space? We must, I feel, in order to let our imaginations go to work on the forms, the colors, the message we want the viewers to see when the painting is finished. We must listen to the silence and not fill it in. We must let it stand alone and appreciate it for the rich source of creativity it is. We must leave some white space and silence in order for the message of our lives to become the intriguing and beautiful painting God intended.
Copyright 2011 Gloria Fisher.
Wow!!! I never thought of silence in this way. Your description of the white space in a painting is pure poetry. I know what you mean, though. Adkins paints his watercolors and leaves the bottom unfinished with only a hint of what might belong there. That captivates my imagination, and I wonder and ponder it. But I never thought of silence as the white space of my imagination. Awesome!! Thank you. Great blog!!!!!
ReplyDelete