Negative and Positive
Negotiating differences
The view from Surfside on Vinalhaven Island, Maine
The portrayal of negative and positive space in two-dimensional work in every culture describes the distinction between where and how an artist makes a mark and the context for that mark, whether on a flat surface or in how anyone perceives life. On a surface, that may be the calligraphic mark of a Chinese brushstroke. In urban design, architecture and sculpture it may be in how a human body moves around or through an object in space. In social sculpture. it can be the history of the helping professions and collaborative teams in public art that change people's expectations for their communities.
Negative and positive space are ways to describe relationships. In painting, dark comes forward, light recedes, A line describes an edge describes a shape and a transition between the perception of more than one object. Human relationships have similar properties.
Yesterday, I had brunch with a friend whose family goes all the way back to the first island settlers in the seventeen hundreds. We ate at a local restaurant and discussed the Tuesday night presidential debate. I like her very much but her politics are dramatically different than my own, especially on some hot topics like abortion. As we spoke and compared our assumptions and experiences, I mentioned how different island attitudes are over most conflicts to conflicts than I'd ever encountered anyplace else when people are in conflict because even extreme differences are tolerated and don't seem to endanger most friendships. She said, "if a friendship is threatened by different views on a matter, it was never a friendship." To my mind, she was defining the positive space of two people and the negative space with energy flowing between them.
In any relationship, there are the two people and then there is what transpires between them. The between could be either the negative or the positive space, depending on how you choose to see things, modifying views and exciting new perceptions. Lets’ say the space between is the positive space. Over time, interactions will likely shape the between they share and then shape them each, creating a creative flow.
In any relationship with a narcissist, the flow is more likely to be a suck, that is, energy is sucked to the narcissist rather than a free exchange. Between two people when one is a narcissist, only one of the participants is likely to change and it isn't the narcissist. If we could speculate that we live in a narcissistic culture, in fact, as I have argued before, in a series of extractive relationships, whether from a subordinate employee or a coal mine, the agent most lifely to change is the supply for extraction, whether a partner or a mountain.
In preparation for my event at the Anita Rogers Gallery, I hope to gather a number of large branches to distribute in the space. Once they are distributed in the gallery, they will have to be negotiated. This will create a flow of positive and negative perceptual space. But the branches won't change because they are dead. That is what a relationship with a source of extraction is like. We negotiate. They are inert.
The judicial system can force the issue of negotiation. The mountain top, the dead forest or the extinct species has no one to plead for their life. It is too late. The victim of the narcissist has no one but themselves to extract them and save them from danger. and if they are a child, that salvation may only come late in life, if at all. In a courtroom, what remains in arguments between parties in conflict are the words to defend principles and protect the next trees, mountains or child of a narcissistic parent. It is the back and forth flow between ideas that changes civilization.
In making art, there is the action of the artist and then the affect, a space between that may take centuries to be revealed. In our current relationships to our habitat, we are watching the revelation of space unveil itself before our eyes. The angry ocean steals the soft earth. The hot winds desiccate the prairies and foment fires. We clearcut the forest.
When I contemplate negative and positive space in my ecosystem, I can only hope to see a way to navigate life not death, to permit that sacred flow.