Blog
Posted on 9/28/2026 1:58:17 PM
By Donald Fox
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Containment
A line is direction; it is distance; it is movement across a surface and through space. We tend to think of line as flat, without depth or substance, with only length and whatever direction it seems to move. A line has purpose within a picture space. It may divide one area from another; it may appear to move or have moved; it may activate otherwise undifferentiated space. In geometry, a line is defined as the shortest distance between two points – but that is strictly a straight line. Lines can certainly meander in any direction. A line may have weight being light or dark, thin or broad. It may begin wide and narrow down to a point as the line of a road disappearing into the distance, or similar to receding telephone poles, or receding fenceposts – those many iterations found in numerous landscape paintings and drawings.
However, I am intrigued by abstract line, line just as itself whether curving or straight, angular or geometric. Line interacting with other lines and building shapes or tone, line creating illusory space, a kind of narrative as it moves, parallel to or intersecting other lines, crossing over, cutting through, bisecting or segmenting, defining edges and enclosing space while making shapes. Line can be fluid and soft; line can be direct and harsh. Line is contemplative, and line is emotional and psychological. Study Rembrandt’s use of line in his drawings and brush paintings. He animates figures and creates emotional depth simply with line. His landscape drawings define space and create powerful images with simple, tightly controlled but seemingly improvisational gestural lines that often feel like a fusion between oriental brushwork and western descriptive drawings. They are magical and mysterious.
Numerous past masters, both traditional and modern, have utilized line effectively and uniquely in their work. From the subtlety of Ingres’ line drawings to the simplicity of Mondrian’s geometric drawings, or from the gestural space-defining drawings of Giacometti to the intricate and expressive web-like designs of Pollock, line has a powerful presence in art that communicates with immediacy the thought process of the individual artist. Line may be simple and direct as an artistic tool, but it is endlessly adaptable to every artist’s intention. It is the artist who instills line with numinous power through sleight of hand magic.
Posted on 9/18/2026 7:19:43 PM
By Donald Fox
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Three Graces
A blank page, an unmarked canvas, an empty stage, fire-scorched earth, or a cloudless sky horizon to horizon – all potential spaces to be activated and transformed by life, by experience, by idea, by inspiration, by natural process. As a child, I went frequently to the seashore and marveled at the expanse of sky and the expanse of deep blue ocean that stretched away from me until it met the sky – each beyond my knowing, just blue merging into blue. Yet, like waves rolling endlessly to shore, the spaces of possibility have filled with one mark and another, activated from nothing to something by sensation, perception – stimulus and response.
The action of life is to move forward, to fill emptiness, to build on promise, to transform possibility into reality or some semblance thereof. The artist moves, is moved, perceives, remembers, and envisions. He or she leaves a trail embedded in a space of possibility with word or image or sound or movement. A new space is born, no longer empty, an invitation for contemplation, for learning, for pleasure, for enhanced experience of being.
