God Was The First Notan Artist

"... and God divided the light from the darkness."

Notan: Design in Light and Dark by Sharon Himes
What is dark is not light and what is light is not dark. This is the basis of all design and an important guiding principle of art. It seems so simple but an artist can spend a lifetime exploring the possibilities of light and dark.
"Notan" is the term used by the Japanese to express "light-dark" as an element of design. In the west we use separate terms such as positive space and negative space, dividing the idea of light-dark into separate components. On paper it is easy to see that dark shapes cannot exist without a surrounding area of white. White shapes cannot exist without dark to define it. The two elements are really one. This is an eastern concept of yin-yang that each is what the other is not.
It is usually the dark aspects of a design that we see first and we are intrigued by optical illusions that seem to switch from one picture to another in our minds. We speak of negative space and mean the white holes in a dark design. In using the term "negative" we are giving it a connotation of null-ness or even sinister aspects. A dark pattern is considered "positive" and therefore dominant when that is not always the case. Sometimes the primary subject is light against an area of dark and thus a positive element. (http://www.artcafe.net/ah/Notan/).


Oh how so many decry the darkness in the world, and yet, without it, we would not know the light.

The picture above is the universe. But wait, I don't see anything. This is actuality. It is not until we have darkness, that the world becomes manifest, and reality is created.

Is, therefore, darkness bad---evil? 
In THE WAKING GOD TRILOGY, Lucifer, a.k.a. Mantrella, is the champion of humanity. Not because he is darkness and evil, but because he shows us the true meaning of the LIGHT!