Friedrich Zettl Fine Arts

About

Art Portfolio

Featured

Art Theory

Journal

A Glimpse of Zen, contemporary ink and felt-pen artwork with sparse black and grey angular gestures on white paper, suggesting an animal-like presence

Zen Paintings: The Art of Emptiness

Contemporary Ink Art Inspired by Zen

These Zen-inspired paintings explore what a mark can set in motion on an otherwise open surface. A broken arc, a spreading patch of ink or a thin coloured line can establish the balance of an entire image. Chinese painting provides a foundation, alongside the gestural possibilities of Western abstraction.

Empty space has several roles in this selection. It separates gestures, holds an interrupted movement and allows a suggestion of landscape or figure to remain unresolved. The works range from sparse studies on light grounds to dense, dark fields animated by small traces of colour.

The Process: Zen Brut

The term “Zen Brut” describes an approach that favours direct, unrehearsed marks. The roughness of a stroke remains part of the finished work: dry edges, changes of pressure and uneven deposits are allowed to stand. This immediacy draws on years of practice, bringing learned control into contact with the unpredictable behaviour of the material.

Gesture, Emptiness and Form

In Flickers in the Void, small red, blue and pale marks interrupt an extensive black field. Their uneven spacing draws attention to intervals as much as to the marks themselves. Black and Blue reverses that relationship: dark and blue gestures gather near the lower edge while a broad area above remains almost untouched.

Flickers in the Void, minimalist pastel and ink painting with isolated red, blue and pale gestures separated by deep black intervals
Flickers in the Void — Pastel and ink, with isolated gestures and dark intervals giving equal weight to presence and absence.
Black and Blue: Zen Brut ink painting with dark blue and black gestures beneath open white space, linking direct brushwork with emptiness.
Black and Blue — Zen Brut ink painting — a compact gathering of strokes leaves most of the paper open.

Dialogue with Tradition

Study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing provides a background to the calligraphic lines, inscriptions and seals found throughout this selection. Motifs such as Bodhidharma and the open circle recur alongside less recognisable forms. The relationship to tradition is visible both in these references and in the attention given to the weight and continuity of a stroke.

When the Zen Master Meditates: Zen-inspired charcoal and pastel artwork with broken dark forms around an open centre and an inscription at left.
When the Zen Master Meditates — Charcoal and pastel, with a broken circular structure holding an open centre.

2024. Charcoal and pastel, 21 × 30 cm. View artwork on FriedrichZettl.com ↗

In When the Zen Master Meditates, charcoal and pastel build a broken, roughly rounded structure around an open centre. Angular passages above the curve suggest both enclosure and interruption. The work also accompanies a three-part fictional journey to a Zen master, discussed through an experiment with AI-assisted interpretation.

Read the accompanying series: Journey to the Zen Master, Part I → Part II → Meditation of the Zen Master, Part III.

In a Zen Garden: contemporary Zen art in acrylic and marker, balancing dense black gestures with a broad hatched arc and open space.
In a Zen Garden — Acrylic and marker; a hatched arc balances the compact gestures beside it.

A broad hatched arc holds the right side of the image against the compact gestures at left. The garden is suggested through this distribution of weight and space. 2024. Acrylic and marker, 21 × 29.5 cm. View artwork on FriedrichZettl.com ↗

Flower in Late Autumn: expressive ink art with a black many-petalled flower, Chinese calligraphy and red seals, connecting flower painting with Zen.
Flower in Late Autumn
The Sound of the Shakuhachi: meditative mixed-media painting with three pale elongated forms against deep purple, connecting musical rhythm and silence.
The Sound of the Shakuhachi — Meditative mixed-media painting, with pale forms spaced like notes within a dark field.

Pale, elongated forms emerge from a dark ground crossed by fine vertical traces. Their uneven spacing suggests a rhythm without describing its source. View artwork on Saatchi Art ↗

Another Zen Moment: Zen-inspired abstract painting with broken red and black arcs on cream, balancing gestural movement with empty space.
Another Zen Moment
Zenimals: expressive ink painting with black, green and brown gestures around a white opening, suggesting an animal without defining its form.
Zenimals

From Ink Painting to Contemporary Gesture

The selection moves between brush painting, calligraphic forms and works made with other drawing materials. In Mother Goose, marker lines gather into a loose body and an extended neck; the image is poised between an animal and a tangle of movement. Zen Stroke takes the written character 一 (yī, “one”) as the basis for a broad, turning gesture.

Early Morning Mood, minimalist Zen-inspired drawing with sparse dry black marks, an inscription and broad white space
Early Morning Mood — A reduced drawing in which sparse, dry marks give the unworked paper a central role.
Mother Goose: Zen-inspired marker drawing with looping black lines suggesting a long-necked bird, joining animal form with calligraphic movement.
Mother Goose — Zen-inspired marker drawing, with a few looping gestures carrying the bird’s weight and movement.

2024. Marker, 21 × 28.5 cm. View artwork on FriedrichZettl.com ↗

Zen Stroke: contemporary Zen calligraphy based on the Chinese character 一, one, transformed into a broad blue and black turning gesture.
Zen Stroke — the Chinese character 一 (yī, “one”)
Morning in the Mountains: expressive ink art with a sweeping red curve and green-black vertical marks, suggesting landscape through Zen-inspired reduction.
Morning in the Mountains — Expressive ink landscape, with a red curve opening the mountain forms into white space.

A red curve crosses the upper field while fine green and black structures rise at left. Landscape is suggested through contrasting directions and densities. 2024. Ink, 29.5 × 21 cm. View artwork on FriedrichZettl.com ↗

A Sound in the Silence: meditative ink painting with dark green and black forms facing across white space, interrupted by a small ochre accent.
A Sound in the Silence — Ink painting — a small ochre accent interrupts the distance between two dark forms.

The dark forms approach one another across a pale interval. A small ochre accent gives that open passage a point of tension. 2023. Ink, 21 × 29 cm. View artwork on FriedrichZettl.com ↗

Zen at the Seashore: Zen-inspired painting with dark angular gestures across orange and turquoise, reducing the seascape to colour, movement and space.
Zen at the Seashore
Hiking in the Mountains: Zen-inspired ink landscape with dry black gestures and green-ochre passages, separated by expansive white space.
Hiking in the Mountains
A Glimpse of Zen in the Morning: meditative painting with fine red, yellow, blue and green arcs across pale grey, giving small gestures an open field.
A Glimpse of Zen in the Morning
Light Ahead, detail: expressive Zen-inspired abstraction with grainy black angular forms on mottled pink-grey, retaining the roughness of the surface.
Light Ahead (detail)
The Sound of Zen in Emptiness: expressive ink art with turquoise and black curves around an open cream centre, connecting gesture, colour and empty space.
The Sound of Zen in Emptiness

Philosophy in Practice

The essays collected under Asian Art Essays examine the traditions and concepts that inform this practice. The Arts and Philosophy Journal follows particular works and the artist’s changing questions. Here, those concerns remain grounded in the images: the meeting of two strokes, a weathered surface, or a passage left open.

The Morning After: Zen-inspired ink painting with broad black gestures across layered pink and grey, contrasting immediate marks with weathered texture.
The Morning After — Zen-inspired ink painting on a layered, weathered pink-grey ground.

Broad dark gestures lie across a pink and grey surface whose mottling remains visible between them. The layered ground gives the image a different sense of duration from the sparse works on white. 2023. Ink, 28.5 × 39.5 cm. View artwork on FriedrichZettl.com ↗

Děng: expressive Zen calligraphy of the Chinese character 等, meaning to wait, with dry black brushstrokes and open white spaces.
Děng — 等, “to wait”
Zen Moment in the Woods: meditative painting with dark floating gestures over turquoise and red vertical traces, suggesting an imagined forest.
Zen Moment in the Woods
Near the End of Time: Zen-inspired mixed-media painting with a long reddish-brown curve and small black marks dispersed across white space.
Near the End of Time
Square Zen: contemporary Zen painting in ink, with dark gestures framing a pale rectangular opening within layered blue-grey washes.
Square Zen — Ink painting, with a pale opening held within a porous frame of dark gestures.

Dark gestures loosely frame a lighter rectangular area. Vertical traces in the blue-grey ground keep that apparent enclosure porous. 2022. Ink, 28.5 × 39 cm. View artwork on FriedrichZettl.com ↗

Flower Sermon, Niān huā wēi xiào: Zen ink painting with a large yellow flower, dark centre and Chinese calligraphy, recalling the Buddhist flower sermon.
Flower Sermon Niān huā wēi xiào (拈花微笑) [wikipedia]
Dialogue: expressive ink painting with two black and ochre curved forms approaching a circle, exploring gesture and open space in Zen art.
Dialogue
Bodhidharma: expressive Zen portrait with a pale blue-grey head, pronounced eyebrows and a loose red robe, reinterpreting a traditional Buddhist figure.
Bodhidharma
The Path of Zen: meditative ink landscape with a misty triangular mountain above dark descending marks, leaving the path and surrounding space partly undefined.
The Path of Zen

Video: Zen Paintings

Related Articles

Mu Qi’s Six Persimmons: An Interpretation

Wu Wei: Effortless Action in Daoism and Chinese Painting

Dao and Zen Again: Applying Eastern Philosophy to Contemporary Ink Painting

Explore Art & Writing

Art Portfolio → Featured Artworks → Arts & Philosophy Journal → All Articles

Explore Asian Art Essays for writing on Chinese painting, calligraphy, aesthetics and art history.

Available Artworks

Original works are available on FriedrichZettl.com and Saatchi Art