So I have been listening to The Great Courses while in my
car and am currently learning about the Daodejing,
subtitled The Dao of Life and Spontaneity.
The book is generally credited to a person known as “old master” though most
scholars believe it comes from a variety of sources. The Daodejing, interestingly enough, is the most frequently translated
book in the world!
The meaning of the word dao is usually translated as “way”
although it is sometimes translated as discourse or discussion and there are
other meanings as well. Mostly though it seems that “way” is the most common
understanding.
As I listened to my audio teacher, I thought of drawing,
and the phrase “dao of drawing” came to mind. What is the way of drawing? In
Daoist thought one pays attention to the empty spaces, the background before
the foreground, to what is not there. From that negative space the positive
emerges.
Now admittedly this is just a tiny tiny piece of Daoism; the philosophy as a whole is much more complex. As I
consider the idea of drawing as dao, a way, a discourse, the thought of
approaching one’s drawing practice as first noting the empty spaces then allowing
the forms to emerge from those spaces intrigues me. After all, it is a common
drawing exercise to set up a series of forms and instruct students to draw the
negative space rather than the objects themselves. This certainly points to a “Dao
of drawing”.
Perhaps if one followed that practice more often when
making marks one might see new and enlightening things. Who knows?
