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I’ve always been a believer that if a painting’s negative spaces--all those areas that surround a painting’s subject--are interesting and well tended to, a good painting is almost assured.

But my love for “empty” spaces was taken to new heights one evening while attending a performance of modern ballet.  During the program, I found myself mesmerized by the constantly moving, very beautiful shapes formed by the empty spaces between and among the dancers.  For me that evening, the negative spaces became the stars of the show!

This experience stretched my creative impulses, and as a direct expansion of my figurative painting, I began extracting quite literally the negative spaces I love so much and converting them to become the positive forms of three-dimensional sculptures. 

In these sculptures, I find myself enjoying the positive forms purely for their shapes, colors and relationships as my eye moves happily from color to color, from shape to shape.  When I finally turn my attention again to the negative spaces between, however, the figure that first inspired the piece suddenly reappears within the void, inevitably bringing a smile to my face.  I love the ensuing dance that's set in motion as I then freely roam from the abstract to the figure and back again.

I hope you'll enjoy the dance as much as I do!

--Don Haggerty

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All Images Copyright © 2012 Don Haggerty

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