What a Photo into Empty Air Taught Me

What a Photo into Empty Air Taught Me

One day during a trip, I saw my child playing by pretending to take photos into the empty air. He was just a little kid, so I let him be, even though we were supposed to be moving to the next location.

My mind was a bit rushed, but there was something so beautiful about how he held the camera up to the sky, pressing the shutter as if he were photographing something only he could see.

I found myself watching him quietly for a long time. Back then, digital cameras required memory cards and a separate process to check what had been captured, and we often reviewed the photos and deleted the ones we didn’t need. When we looked through his random shots, we came across an image taken in that “empty” space—and in it was a striking pattern, almost like angel wings.

It might have been an insect in motion or simply a wave of light from a shaky hand, but in that moment, it made me think: maybe there is a world that exists even in the places we cannot see. That moment has stayed with me ever since, and it has helped me understand the idea of negative space in art.

Often when we draw, we focus only on the subject, forgetting that the space around it—the unspoken, the unpainted—also holds meaning. That photo reminded me that even the invisible has form. When I paint, there comes a point where I disappear into the process.

My mind becomes completely absorbed in the canvas or the paper in front of me. At that level of immersion, the boundary between myself and the surface dissolves. Strangely, the paintings I create in that state—where I’m not trying to control the result—are the ones that are most deeply felt by others. It’s not that they are technically perfect, but rather that they are sincere, undistracted, and alive. I think life is similar.

We live through wounds, frustrations, resentment, and moments that feel deeply unfair. Sometimes the emotions rise up so suddenly that we feel like screaming. But in the act of painting, I’ve come to see those feelings too as part of the composition—messy, painful, but still essential. Just like when paint accidentally splashes on a canvas and creates an unintended shape: if I can accept it as part of the whole, not a mistake to erase, my heart feels lighter. In the same way, life—like art—changes completely depending on how we choose to see it.

​Even the scenes we never meant to capture can, one day, become the most luminous of all.

​The way to change your destiny is simple.
Take your eyes off other people's lives and focus on your own life.

​A reflection on how a child’s photo into empty air revealed something unseen—and how that moment taught a painter to embrace negative space, emotion, and imperfection as essential parts of both art and life.