Today Is For Softening

Ango, a zen practice period, means coming together in peace for meditation, study and work. An ango lasts for about 90 days. This winter I've imagined my painting practice as an ango loosely following the practice at Hokyoji. Except I'm here. Alone in my studio, sitting and painting with Mr. Munchkins in his white fur okesa. Instead of chanting we purr. Sometimes my husband joins us. Even though we have a room set aside for meditation, over the years zafus and zabutans have moved into my studio next to the easel and tables.

I love this season. Everything is strangely fragile. Though colors are soft, at times the light is too vivid for me. For several weeks I've worked night and day on a new painting and today I feel like washing all the color away. I want a painting that speaks with quiet energy like this end of winter season. The image you see here is an early detail of the larger painting that's almost finished now. I'm moving toward a quieter palette with more earth tones. So today is for softening. It's for softening my mind and heart, and for softening the contrasts in this new painting moving it closer to these muted winter days. This new work is inspired by images of a Japanese garden in St. Louis, Missouri. I visited there a few years ago in late winter. A frozen pond reflected the sky in a sheen of water on the melting ice. A tangle of stems from crumpled dead lilies reached toward the sky from deep in the ice. I see an abstract. A metaphor. I want to spend every spare moment painting. I'm frustrated I'm so slow— with so many images waiting for the brush.