Sometimes an artist will ignore the most important part of their painting, the part that gives the painting a feeling of “reality”.  I’m talking about negative spaces…the spaces that surround a solid. Assume that you see a table and are angled where you see the front legs and the back legs.  Is there something in the space between the two legs?  Perhaps, they are set on a patterned carpet.  If there is something showing up in the negative space, it becomes very important to your final work of art.  Do not ignore it. Imagine Lynn Burton’s painting, “Preparing to Ride”, to the left. Had he left out any of the great many details in the negative spaces, the painting would never have been the award winning painting that it is.

It is the same with Richard D. Burton’s “Winter Kindling”, the painting is filled with different things in the shadows that fills up the negative spaces and keeps the viewer interested in the painting as they discover “some exciting” something else.

Consider this: You notice a neighbor lady stooping over in her garden cleaning out the weeds with a hoe.  It’s in the twilight of the evening and an aura of mauve blankets the scene.  Her arm stretches out as she chops the weeds.   There is a space between her body and her arm.  Did you notice it?  Did you see what’s in the space? Would that help complete a painting? I feel most professional artists would agree it sometimes is the thing that makes the painting complete.

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