I came across the work of Arjan Janssen on a site Professor Hermon was raving about; ‘butdoesitfloat.com is a resource you should all know of, it is filled with great images’ he said with tremendous surety & jurisdiction. In retrospect, he was right. I recall almost immediately having my attention arrested by the bare, disparate paintings that met my gaze once the webpage had finally loaded. Usually, I don‘t bat my eyelashes twice at fine art pieces that fall in the class of “things vast majority of people say they can make themselves...” but this time, things were quite different.

I was captivated by the broad, powerful lines of black paint that Janssen used to mar the canvas, the unremitting “empty” spaces that took up most of the works entirely. What was most startling yet alluring is that beyond the bare aesthetic components of Janssen‘s art, which left me in awe on their own, I felt such a wealth of emotion. Emotion that stemmed from what spanned beyond the canvas itself. I connected with the pieces even though I couldn‘t necessarily deduce anything from them. And with that, my journey into the concept of negative space began. In the wake of such an exploration, I was led to see (and appreciate) the notions of perspective, awareness, and connotation in a new light.