I love making art with negative space. It strikes me as really cool to create with the parts around what you make.

It has an inherent and fundamental feel that what is important is what is the stuff that’s not there. The added bonus is it helps turn off the left-side brain thinking where you are trying to draw what you have in front of you.

Focusing on the gaps of the stuff you are making really helps to simply focus on the elements of drawing – the line, the shape, the angle.

Some of my favourite paintings prominently feature this.

As watercolour requires me to plan out and there is no white paint layer that works to make an opaque white, I have to leave spaces that will be the highlights.

In this, the Toronto Streetcar in the Night, my vision was to have the brightness of the white TTC streetcar stand out from the darkness, like having a saving grace for taking the last train back home. I wanted very specifically to leave the white parts out. In contrast, I used some white paint to clarify the street sign of Spadina.

I had a similar approach to this The Music Hall. While I could have also used masking, part of me feels like it’s “cheating” in a way. I instead took the risk to make out all the letters by some careful brushwork.

I think it’s a fun way to make something really interesting in art – think more about what you don’t paint rather than what you do.