A Chawan is a tea bowl used for Chado, the century old traditional Japanese Way of Tea.
It is an object of appreciation, shaped from earth and water by the hands of the potter, transmuted by fire, to form a symbolic circular landscape around a crucible of emptiness, and designed to receive a revered essence of nature: tea. It has been said that, as you hold the bowl in your palms, you hold the cosmos in stillness.
While having practiced Chado for nearly twenty years, I never intended to make paintings of Chawan(s). Yet one day, I realized that I had actually painted one. And so the Chawan Landscape series began.
I see a parallel between my painting process, and that of the ancient art of making raku tea ceremony bowls. Both are committed to natural mutable and uncontrollable forces that will determine their outcome. Both are meant to be a universe in themselves.
