Negative Matter

I once attended a drawing course. One day we were painting still life. There was a vase and a green bottle on a table top. Our instructor told us something about seeing and drawing negative spaces. He said Degas drew and painted like that.

 

Then I tried to focus on what "we are not supposed to see", the shape of spaces between the wall, the vase, and the green bottle, and shapes of shades reflected and competing with each other on the bottle and so on.

I ended up having a well balanced painting, pleasant and simple.

There is something about seeing "negative matter", a sense of truthfulness and serenity. We wouldn't be able to make meaningful connections with positive matter if we lacked that.

In this blog I will pursue negative matter. I'll talk about engineering, philosophy, physics, software, marketing, evolution, design, consciousness, politics, and art. 

At times I will seek forgotten, mundane, and dull spaces to make sense of positive matter and other times to reshape it.