The Canyon Between Western Art Training and Life

As I've been developing material for my upcoming Asian Brush Painting Workshop, it's taken me to a place I've visited before - how Eastern Arts are so very different than Western Arts.  There's only been maybe one person whose path I've crossed who is trained in Western painting but understands something about Eastern arts.  No doubt there are more, I've just not had the good fortune to cross their path.

It's such a gulf between the two forms that attempting to capture it is beyond my ability.  How to explain the concept of energy?  You know it exists.  You can feel it.  Yet, it's inexplicable.  Perhaps like love.  Thankfully, there are poets to point us in the right direction.

In Chinese calligraphy the most challenging 'painting' is a one-stroke painting.  That is, a painting consisting of just that - one 'simple' stroke of the brush.  It's the most difficult painting to execute because everything in the painting must be conveyed by that one stroke.  This is utterly foreign (no pun intended) to the Western artist and viewer.  The quote from D.T. Suzuki does hit the mark, “The arts of Zen are not intended for utilitarian purposes, or for purely esthetic enjoyment, but are meant to train the mind, indeed, to bring it into contact with ultimate reality.”

Han-shan, a Tang Dynasty poet, captured the dilemma of words saying,

“My heart is like the autumn moon,
pure as a blue-green pool,
No, this comparison sucks!
How can I explain?

How can I explain what is inexplicable?  How can you explain your experience of sex?  Indeed.