White spaces can be profoundly beautiful; full of mystery and promise, a reminder of the infinite potential that dwells within nature--and each of us.

Pine Trees

, 16th century, by Hasegawa Tōhaku, Tokyo National Museum.

Among my favorite paintings are a set of screens depicting Pine Trees, painted by Hasegawa Tōhaku about 1680. I discovered them during my study of Japanese arts and culture in college. The trees, delicately painted in shades of black ink, are surrounded by large swaths of unpainted white silk. Dreamy as the imagery is, the vision that Pine Trees offered seemed very real to me because I’d experienced many similar scenes as I walked the environs of San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden, near to where I lived for many years. Breezes from the Pacific gently moved the moist foggy mists, wrapping them around trees, creating ever shifting scenes that nudged me into contemplation.

Whether gazing at ink paintings or walking in the fog, I experienced the white spaces and mists as a profound beauty full of mystery and promise—appropriate for someone whose life as an adult was just beginning to flower. The emptiness of the space held a real beauty for me. It was the potential of my life.

The beauty of the extra white, the space left empty, is called yohaku no bi in Japanese. This is a concept borrowed from Chinese landscape ink wash paintings, where clouds, mist, sky, and water could be left unpainted. Their presence was suggested only by the carefully rendered edges of the surrounding landscape. This artistic strategy resonated with Taoism’s idea of qi (chi) – the formless energy from which the universe emanates.

In the 12th century Buddhist priest-artists brought the empty space concept and its expression back to Japan. In time, the use of empty space moved beyond painting (Sumi-e or Suibokuga) and became a key characteristic of Japanese art and design. It found its place in art forms such as calligraphy, garden design (especially dry gardens), and flower arranging.

Zen artists in particular appreciated the dynamic vitality created by empty areas. They saw in them a signifier of the Buddhist notion of emptiness as the ultimate reality. In this context emptiness doesn’t signify lack or something negative. Instead, it can be understood as an energetic field of infinite potentiality. This potentiality is what brings such energy to the use of empty space in Zen-inspired design, where empty areas carry the same weight as painted areas. In significant ways the empty space contributes a unique quality of structure, balance and definition in a composition.