Sumi-e Bamboo Original Painting: Japanese Zen Art

Sumi-e Bamboo Grove — Traditional Japanese art, handpainted in black ink on raw unbleached rice paper, not framed.

Size: 26⅓ × 13⅓ inches (67×34 cm).

Painting of bamboo stalks and leaves is an old and noble genre of the traditional Japanese sumi-e. The contrast between the foreground and background, and between the varying textures represented by the stalks and the leaves, gave scope to the painter to demonstrate their skills and mastery with an inkpot and a brush and to reflect their mood and state of awareness.

Traditional bamboo paintings are both a type of painting and a type of calligraphy. They are made using the same type of ink and the same strokes as used in Chinese and Japanese calligraphy for writing characters. In Oriental painting, bamboo represented the Confucian value of moral virtue.

A person who is mentally and spiritually strong is just like a stalk of bamboo. That is, flexible enough to bend with whatever life throws at them but reliable and tough enough to stand strong and keep growing.

For this painting I used unbleached rice paper with bamboo fibers.
The finished signed artwork is stamped with my personal seal, along with "Harmony" and "Zen" seals also carved by myself.