John Cage Watercolors

I had no idea John Cage did visual art. While in the Houston Museum of Fine Arts bookstore recently, I came across "The Sight of Silence: which documents workshops he did at the Mountain Lake Workshop in Appalachian Virginia in 1990 --and the work is fantastic!

Note the effect of the paper laid over 
burning straw 

I so resonated with his process!  He uses randomness, chance (actually using the I Ching to chose the sequence of colors), natural materials (stones for shapes, feathers for applying inks, burning straw to tint the paper, etc.) while refining the right to judge the aesthetics of the final product. 

                                           

                                                            Using natural materials -- stones selected 

                                                   for shape, feathers to apply the inks

He makes judicious use of the enzo which the book defines as:  "a spontaneously painted circular form that is particularly identified with the japans practice of Zen and is under soon as a sudden manifestation of the immediacy of enlighten self-insight"

The results are delicate, ethereal works of art that are so compelling! 

The Circle, the Spiral, the Enzo

One of the most common themes I use in my work is the circle, either complete as if it were a sphere depicted in two dimensions, or in its incomplete, but equally important form, the enzo.  

In Japan, an "enzo" is a brushed-ink painting of a Zen circle that monks make while meditating. The enzo is one of the deepest symbols in Japanese Zen: a symbolic representation of enlightenment, encompassing the universe in an endless, cyclical line. For the practitioner, the act of creating each single circle is a visual koan in which the state of that moment is revealed.

As you can see, I typically embed the image in a context of layers seemingly created by erosion, corrosion, or by sedimentation or layering of the effects of time.