Zen at its Finest

This is a landscape by Zen painter Sesshu
I love japanese art because you can just sit back and enjoy the piece and have light conversation of it. Also i like how many different people could come up to this painting and have a different interpretation of it, instead of playing I spy looking for icons and sybolistic characters you get to enjoy the piece as it is. To me this painting depicts a calm and peaceful chilly morning and the people are comming back home from fishing maybe or they probably went out for a walk. i think it feels chilly to me because of the monochromatic black and the harsh edges and lines in the mountains. I also saw morining because it has a misty feel and made me think of dew or how sometimes it gets misty in the morning then it dies out because of the sun later. It could also be misty because they're on a moutain top, depending on how high the altitude is, that could be clouds.

I love how japanese art has an openess to it; there's foreground then there is background. the middle ground here to me reads as water, i think i see some sails on the water. Maybe that second moutain with the small house on there is in the middle ground too, and the misty moutain behind that house it breaks up into and forces itself into the middle ground. this piece isnt like the other pieces i have seen in japanese art. Usually the foreground is smaller and doesn't go into the middle or background; leaving the middle ground completely open. But even with that i still feel the openess.

This image is from the book but I just wanted to show an example of what japanese art usually looks like and compare the two. the two deffinately look different, but the one on top still has that japanese feel to it. Also it is said there are seven qualities of Zen art; those qualities are asymmetry, simplicity, austere meaning like a look of withering in winter than abundance in spring or summer, naturalness, spiritual depth, lack of attachment, and tranquility. (Toget a better understanding the site i got this from is http://www.japanese-arts.net/painting/gen_zen.htm) And the artwork that embodies all of these qualities is considered a fine piece of work meaning like really good.