Animals in Zen Paintings – Feng Shui Wall Art Decor

by Alex Fabelli Artist and Designer

With their clean, monochrome lines and simple subjects, Zen paintings are an ideal choice for wall art in minimalist interior design. Also known as sumi-e, the ink wash painting characteristic of Zen art is done with a brush similar to calligraphy brush and tapered to a fine point, almost always in black. The artist's name is often added in red stamped characters.

Dating to the Tang Dynasty in China, this style of line painting is often used to depict animals, landscapes and wildlife in a delicate, abstract expressionist form. Just enough detail in shape and tone is included to give the animals a soft, lively quality.

Often completed in a quick, evocative manner, Japanese Zen paintings may portray a monk, or secular themes with scholarly symbolic significance such as flowering plums, bamboo and birds. A single brushstroke can vary dramatically in tone to establish texture and depth in an elegant, nuanced line. Highly absorbent papers or silk are often used as material, although sumi-e paintings can also be found in canvas wall art prints.

Zen paintings are also often abstract art paintings, and partial abstraction is typical of paintings that feature flowers, birds or other animals. In Zen landscape painting, there is no vanishing point, and the lines establishing a horizon instead run across the page in a parallel structure. This adds an element of the surreal to the scene, which is usual imaginary or only loosely inspired by actual places.

In Zen Buddhism two important concepts apply to the artistic sensibility of landscape and nature paintings, wabi and sabi. While wabi stimulates the mind and emotions to contemplate the abstract essence of the real, sabi is the principle of aesthetics that involves pleasing the senses. In Zen aesthetics, melancholy, loneliness and age are favored subjects, and rustic, natural settings are typical of portrait art and other depictions of human figures.

During the Edo period, when the nobility patronized Japanese arts, powerful animal figures predominated in sumi-e paintings as hawks, horses, and oxen. Sparrows and geese are favorite birds depicted in ink paintings from this period. The sparrow symbolizes happiness in Japan, and is often depicted flying around playfully or perched on bamboo. The crane is also a major subject in ink wash painting, elegant and symbolic of good luck.

Tigers are especially popular subjects for canvas wall art, often painted as if they are bursting out of the frame to menace the room. In Zen paintings, monkeys are also popular subjects. The Japanese snow monkey or macaque is an especially beautiful inhabitant of the mountainous countryside, known for human-like facial expressions and behavior.

Boneless paintings of swimming koi or gold fish are also popular subjects for Japanese wall art. Sometimes depicted in full color, they are nevertheless realized in the same spare, elegant style as monochrome Zen brushwork.

Surreal monsters and mythical creatures can also be found in Zen paintings, including demons, ghosts, and dragons. Lion dogs (shi-shi) are mythical creatures that often sit quietly at the gates of Shinto shrines and repel evil spirits, much like the foo dogs that protect Chinese temples. They guard temples in pairs, usually in complementary poses. One holds its mouth open to frighten demons away, and the other keeps its mouth closed to keep in the good spirits.

Animals are also sometimes depicted in anthropomorphic actions that mock human behavior with metaphor, as a Lewis Carroll fantasy. In a famous painting by Katsushika Hokusai, historical struggles between samurai and peasant farmers are depicted allegorically in a struggle between a farmer and an octopus that has seized one of his tools.

Insects are also used to symbolize people the artist sought to make fun of, like feudal lords carried aloft in a palanquin by servants. Other paintings celebrate the natural beauty of insects like the praying mantis, which is considered lucky.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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