A Reflection on a Blossom in Autumn
A fading blossom is the starting point for this small series of theme and variations. It also carries an allusion to a woman growing older. Instead of autumn’s bright colours, I worked mainly with black, grey and the white of the paper. I wanted to see how much of the subject could remain as its familiar features disappeared.
I set myself a few practical limits:
- Stay with one small subject or detail.
- Reduce the elements gradually and see what still carries the subject.
- Resist making the work merely pleasing.
- Look for an expressive quality that survives the loss of a pretty appearance.
Removing familiar features creates another task: the image still needs something to hold the eye. I hoped the rhythm of the marks, their weight and their relationship to the writing would carry more as the description became simpler.
Approach to the Theme and Variations
I returned to the grey flower from Visit of the Old Zen Master and Other Nonzens. In that article, it stood in an imagined, untidy Zen garden. Here, I wanted to follow the flower itself through a series of changes.
The imagined story behind it is a small, rather dark fable. A woman, once so proud of her beauty that she found nobody worthy of it, has become a fallen blossom. In the late autumn of her life, she rests on the earth, to the delight of beetles and ants. This was the association I brought to the theme, rather than something I expected every viewer to read from the image alone.
Theme and Variations: Removing and Adding
As the stem becomes less important, the flower loses some of its botanical identity. The story and, later, the poem offer another kind of presence. I am adding associations while taking away descriptive details.
I wrote the poem in Chinese, partly for its classical associations and partly for the freedom it gave me to arrange the writing. The inscription becomes part of the composition. Its spacing and rhythm matter alongside its words.
驕傲的綻放未被觸及的落下，
秋天的泥土，她的安息之地，
螞蟻和甲蟲歡呼。
Adding Poetry
I then shortened the idea into what I call a semi-haiku—an informal name for the short verse, rather than a claim to a strict haiku form.
Semi-Haiku:
Proud bloom, fallen low,
Autumn’s gift for creatures small,
Nature’s gentle touch.
Theme and Variations in a Musical Context
The title also points towards music, a continuing interest discussed in Can We Hear a Painting?
Bach has a particular place in that interest. I approached the blossom as a recurring theme whose character could change through rhythm, emphasis and omission. The drawings remain related, but I did not want them to repeat the same effect.
Could I take the series further? Probably, but I had reached the point where another immediate attempt might simply repeat what was already there. I wanted to leave it aside for a while. When I return, I may see another way to reduce it—or find that something I removed needs to come back.
A Note on the Presentation
The artworks shown here are hand-painted. I generally work in ink or mixed media. The final illustration places one of those paintings in a digitally created interior, so that it can be imagined on a wall. The setting is virtual; the painting is my original work.
Related articles
Visit of the Old Zen Master and Other Nonzens · Can We Hear a Painting? · Withered Leaves and Blossoms
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