I'm no student of eastern art, but when I lived in Japan I was told often
that in Japanese paintings the meaning lies in the spaces the strokes
create more than in the strokes.
It gave me a whole new way of thinking about painting, and I once
used the idea in a poem in which I tried to characterize the wonderful
but sparse conversations I had with one of my close female friends.
"That's what it's like talking with you," the last stanze went, after a
description of what I knew of Japanese brush art. "The lines define the
spaces, which meaning fills." I wonder how often we Americans notice
spaces in conversations as other than uncomfortable gaps that must be
filled.
Marie