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            When you think of space, what comes to mind? Some may first think of containment or is there enough space to accommodate a piece of furniture, to hold leftovers in a certain size container, to ease into a parking area comfortably and safely? Others might think of grander visions like a mountain vista or the vast expanse of a starry night sky. Architects, landscapers, and sculptors think about defining space with objects and boundaries to create visual and emotional appeal. Painters may have some of these ideas of physical space in mind while painting, but their actual space is limited to the size of whatever surface they work upon, which could be mural size or as small as a postage stamp. The suggested space, however, can seem limitless like the sky above a landscape or a line stretching to some indeterminant distant point. 

            How a painter suggests space on a flat surface might seem magical to some, but there are very basic principles utilizing line, shape, and contrast that facilitate what is usually termed illusionistic space since that space cannot be physically traversed. In a lot of modern painting (dated generally from the beginning of the twentieth century), illusionistic space is called a visual lie. To me this is a silly characterization since it is understood that a painting is a depiction of something – either an image or an idea that serves as a mirror or visual sounding board upon which a viewer reflects. It is composed of real materials like canvas and paint, but they are transformed through artistry into something akin to the imaginary space of a poem or story or piece of music. Words properly composed can create the experience of vast space as can music, and these are as illusory as any painting.

            For many centuries Western painting used the familiar space of the everyday world to relay ideas about the experience of life. Painting developed from rather crude representations to very sophisticated depictions of the observable world. During different eras, artists focused on spiritual ideas using the real world as a starting place. Angels, cherubs, mythical beings, or transformative light brought heaven to earth or elevated the lowly into the sublime. The manipulation of space by painters was an integral part of this experience. Spiritual beings could float in space whereas ordinary humans could not as one example. Images from classical mythology told one form of spiritual story while biblical characters told another, and the depicted space of the real world contained both. 

            Eventually painters focused more on the space of nature and responded to nature as a kind of spiritual realm. Light and shadow infused the world with mystical properties, and color was the primary tool with which painters could convey a sense of spiritual space – think about the grand vistas of 19th century American painting by the Hudson River painters or the magnificent western landscapes of that period. It is the treatment of space and light in these paintings that generate such powerful and emotionally affecting responses in viewers. For many painters, despite what aesthetic critics have written, the move into abstraction was less about rejecting objects and the observable world, and more about embracing the effects of natural color and light, which led to visual space that directly connected to imaginary space within the mind of the painter. Inner and outer vision were, and are, often one and the same.