My architecture is borne out of the realm of the abstract;
for me, the beginning of all thinking must lay in the abstraction of a two dimensional thought.
Object and then nothing; an empty page and then a single line.

In my beginning is my end…

– TS Eliot (Four Quartets, East Coker)

If I were to see the writing of Schubert as it sits on a page it develops out of patterns that are heard in space in the aorist before anything is placed down;
before anything is heard it is first imagined
and then placed on a sheet in the abstract;
within silence
and where each cadence, each subtle interplay is imposed on the paper
that was once an empty page
for it to last forever.

What of a fragment of Picasso’s Guernica?
Is it not a fragment of the two dimensional
intensifying by virtue of the absence of rounded form;
the contradiction of more by virtue of less.

‘Nothing’ as an essence of life and empty space is a thought worth considering.
With space is made the fear of an atmosphere; the life in aroma, the depth of echo,
the resonating of an object to make a sound, warmth and comfort; all kept unseen; emptiness staging a scene for heightened perception.

The absence of things is known to an artist; a single line able to make all sense
if crafted beautifully;
a single line able to show wisdom and intent
– laconic – not much but everything – direct – dealing only with the essential –
in it an entire atmosphere of concurrent consequences with little effort –
for the line contains the space around it.

A rest in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto is indeed a full rest; concomitant with a note;
the space making the note more intense;
so deep in the conscience of a consciousness;
so bearing of consideration and effort
and yet this is no sound at all;
the equivalent of the actor’s pause,
the momentary nothing that fills the true work of art with hope,
potential and brilliant.
These things in my mind are two dimensional;
of no tense;
of no tangible presence;
of subtlety and repose.

They exist in the service of art and in no other facility are they venerated as highly;
the nothing of a space equal to the presence of form.