blank canvas

By analogy with artists having a blank canvas and thus being able to do what they want with it.

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blank canvas (plural blank canvases or blank canvasses)

1. (figuratively) Something with no content, upon which one can easily impose or project one's point of view.

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

   • 1903, Leonard Merrick, The Quaint Companions‎:

     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.

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

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

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blank,‎ canvas.
   • 1916, Rebecca West, Henry James‎:

     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; […]

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

     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.

• blank slate
• new canvas, empty canvas
• new page, empty page, blank page
• new sheet, empty sheet, blank sheet
• new leaf, empty leaf, blank leaf