Experiments #49-50: Negative Space

Experiments #49-50: First, a meditation on this Carlos Castaneda, “[Don Juan] pointed to a large bush and told me to fix my attention not on the leaves but on the shadows of the leaves. He repeated over and over… that to not do what I knew how to do was the key to power. In the case of looking at a tree what I knew how to do was to focus immediately on the foliage. Thad shadows of the leaves or the spaces in between them were never my concern… I became so immersed in the shadows of the leaves that by the time Don Juan stood up I could almost group the dark masses of shadows as effectively as I normally grouped the foliage. The total effect was startling. I told Do Juan that I would like to stay longer. He laughed ‘I told you, the body likes things like this.‘”

This was about learning to see what we don’t normally look at. I tried it first with the eucalyptus trees through my window. I tried to focus on the spaces between them. It was surprisingly difficult. Then, for the drawing, I looked at the spaces in-between my paintbrushes: