White space & choosing to crop artwork

Above: Full artwork and cropped selections – still deliberating whether to reach for the scalpel!

Who would have thought the idea of white space could be so controversial?

Designers out there will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Having been a graphic designer most of my life I’ve regularly faced the comment or instruction to fill any white space I'd allowed for, in what was to me a practice in balance. White space is absolutely necessary, not an opportunity for something else to replace or fill it. In music it is the vital gaps between notes and space between beats; if sound was relentless it would lose its feel.

I bring this up because my work does not (or hasn’t so far) fitted the edge-to-edge ‘tradition’. Separately I’ve been considering whether or not to wield the scalpel and do a few cropped abstracts from one large painting.

Reason for cropping: I like specific detail across it, closing in on that might emphasise it rather than lose it over the whole...

Read More