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Out of nothing: painting and spirituality

This essay builds on a paper delivered at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, 2010. This conference brought together thinkers from the art world/academia, the clergy and political world, with keynote speaker the internationally respected art theorist James Elkins. The published book essay/chapter explored and extended themes from this and another published paper Art & Otherness. My chapter/essay deals with nothingness, emptiness and uncertainty in contemporary abstract painting and thought, establishing a connecting principle which runs from early Christian negative theology through to recent postmodern theorists, deconstructive strategies and current abstract painting. It considers concepts of the unknown and the unrepresentable in both theory and practice with the unknown viewed as a vital force and counter balance to an increasingly knowledge/information driven society and economy and abstract painting as a method of exploring this.