The Choice to Not Paint

When I was young, I felt secure only when I filled the entire canvas. Leaving white areas felt somehow incomplete. But one day, I suddenly felt suffocated beneath the layers of paint. It was like a text crammed with too many words, leaving no space to breathe. So I stopped painting, left it untouched overnight. The next morning, what spread before me wasn't a feeling of "incompleteness," but a "just right" stillness.

White space tests your courage. Adding something might make it look properly finished. But I deliberately choose not to add. To stay there. The choice not to paint, I believe, is not an escape, but a trust. Trusting the air between colors. Trusting the viewer's senses. Leaving my own hesitation right there on the canvas.

I feel this particularly strongly when listening to classical music. For example, in Beethoven's slow movements, there is a deep breath between the notes. There, it is not so much the melody itself that remains in the mind, but the space after the sound has faded away. It is the same with jazz. Miles Davis' trumpet does not tell the whole story. Rather, by not telling the whole story, it leaves it to the listener's imagination. I think the white space in a painting is also a place of "leaving it to the imagination."

White space is a place for dialogue

White space is also a space for dialogue with the viewer. When a canvas is filled with information, the viewer can only receive it. But when there is white space, people begin to place their own memories and feelings there. Blankness creates room for others to enter. That is why I have recently begun to deliberately leave large areas of white space.

This mirrors my own life. Overbooking my schedule quickly exhausts my spirit. Yet, even a single unplanned moment allows my breath to deepen. White space isn't laziness; it's preparation for the next stroke. The same holds true in creation: precisely because there are times when I don't paint, the moment I do paint becomes clearer.

In the world of literature, white space is vital too. The emotions drifting between the lines, the unspoken background, the deliberately unexplained feelings of characters—these stimulate the reader's imagination. I want to create that "space between the lines" within my paintings. I place silence between colors, where lines break off. So that people might pause there.

Abstract art is often criticized as "you can't tell what it's supposed to be." But I think that's fine. It is precisely within that state of not knowing that people find themselves. The blank space might be like a mirror for that purpose. By not giving it a clear form, the viewer's own form emerges.

In my recent work, I've reduced the number of colors and simplified the composition compared to before. Moving from addition to subtraction. Suppressing the urge to fill the canvas, I confront its white space. That white is never nothingness; it is a field holding infinite potential. When I place a single stroke there, I always feel a little tense. So that the white space isn't broken.

If, when standing before a work, you sense a quiet expanse somewhere, that is surely the work of the blank space. If you feel a sensation as if wind passes through it, I would be delighted. To enjoy blank space, I believe, is to accept the absence of something. It is not to fear an unfilled state. And it is to share that space with others.

Today, once again, I stand before the white canvas. I do not try to fill it all. I leave a little behind. Hoping that this space left behind becomes the breath of the work, quietly expanding within someone's heart.