The Drawing Spirit and Sabi

Today is a cold winter day, yet it is sunny outside. There is an oak tree in the back yard and it has held onto many of its leaves. The leaves look like old green paper. I can see the roots of the tree burrowing down into the ground like fat fingers. I wonder if they feel the cold?

Early this morning I was reading Haiku by the Japanese Poet Matsuo Basho. In many of his poems there is what the Japanese call Sabi. It means loneliness, quiet, emptiness. It carries with it a melancholy flavor. Sometimes I think that my realistic drawings carry this Sabi--at least I feel this while I am drawing.

I am trying to perfect my drawings and yet make them simple and direct just as Basho worked, to the end of his life, to do this with his poems. This kind of refinement is rare in American/ Western culture but is found in Japanese and Chinese culture.

Some of the things the Japanese use in the pursuit of this refinement are flower arranging, Bonsai, Kendo, calligraphy, and tea ceremony. I admire them very much for this.

In my poor way I will continue to work on my art as I follow the Japanese (and Chinese) example of "perfection" and "attainment."

As I work on my art I find that the inside of me also changes: it gets quieter, more still; it looks deeper.

I look for life between the cracks and in the hidden corners: the spider web near the basement window and how it has trapped light and dust; the trees as they appear through the fog and how the city lights turn them into silhouettes. Anything can be beautiful and a subject for a drawing: insects, cups, a deformed ear, an old shoe, the reflected light in the iris of an eye, or a blue vein in the hand as it winds it's way down the finger.


Natalie Goldberg, a writer and practising Buddhist uses her writing as a spiritual practise. She wrote one of the greatest books on writing. It is called "Writing Down The Bones."

She is a great inspiration.

Wish me luck as I wind my way down the long road in the pursuit of Sabi.
I still have a long way to go and time is short.