The Empty Chair is a recurring motif in Art and Culture. It appears in philosophical writing from Rev Nachman of Brastlav to French philosopher Jacques Lacan. In Jewish religious practice, the empty-chair motif can be found in synagogues, at the Seder tables, as well as circumcisions.
An Empty Chair can symbolize both “absence and presence”. In the Kabbala, the white spaces between the words are considered “sacred emptiness”. They are as important as the words themselves. Similarly, the French composer Claude Debussy said, “Music happens in the space between the notes.”
An empty chair symbolizes loneliness and loss. Nevertheless. the human imagination has the ability to conjure up the ‘visible’ presence of a person sitting on an empty chair. In this way, our mind renders the invisible, visible.
Empty Chair 1
Oil on Canvas 40x50cm, 2021Empty Chair 2 Oil on Canvas 40x50cm, 2021 Interior with Plant oil on canvas 90x70cm 2019 Silver Kettle 2019 Interior oil on canvas 60×50 2019 Leek 2020 40x40cm