blank canvas

plural blank canvases · plural blank canvasses

1. alsofigurativelyepistemologyAn unmarked or empty state, offering a limitless potential for creation, development or interpretation.

   After his ex-wife moved out, his life was a blank canvas.

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   Near-synonyms: new canvas, clean slate, new page, new sheet, new leaf

   Her gaze was wide while she was wondering; then her lids drooped low, and lower, as on the blank canvas of her mental view there grew laboriously a conception.

   1903, Leonard Merrick, The Quaint Companions

   But when we're truly engaged with the blank canvas of our lives, moment to moment, a timeless quality emerges.

   2014, Panache Desai, Discovering Your Soul Signature, Hachette, →ISBN

   Synonyms: blank slate, empty canvas, empty page, blank page, empty sheet, blank sheet, empty leaf, blank leaf

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blank, canvas.

   From a practical point of view, it has been easier to apply this model to Spain's high-speed system - effectively a blank canvas - than it would be to Britain's deeply interwoven and congested classic network.

   2023 July 26, Ben Jones, “EU open access growth offers pointers for UK hopefuls”, in RAIL, number 988, page 33

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   There are no such personal revelations in The Madonna of the Future, nor anything, indeed, at all characteristic of Mr James. There is beauty in the tale of the American painter who dreams over a model for twenty years, while he and she grow old, and leaves at his death nothing more to show for his dreams than a cracked blank canvas; […]

   1916, Rebecca West, Henry James