Tea Fields stmt

Olivia's Art Studio - Landscapes

Artist's
Inspiration

24" x 36" Oil/Canvas

Tea Fields

“When I close my eyes to see, to hear, to smell, to touch a country I have known, I feel my body shake and fill with joy as if a beloved person had come near me.”

Fuji stood perennially snow-clad at the back of my mind, and the three-stringed samisen, invisible, sighed quietly, slowly, with restrained, reticent sadness. Landscape, kimono, woman, music, twilight . . all these kept weaving back and forth inside me, made harmonious by the seriousness and grace.

Sakura
“cherry blossom”

Kokoro
“heart”

The most famous of all Japanese gardens are the chaniwa, the tea gardens; they lead to a small room which is used for the tea ceremony. The sentiment they want to project is isolation, meditation, deliverance from the roaring of the world. Going to this sacred little house, you feel as if you were very away from the world, at a deserted shore, in an autumn twilight. In order to project the concept of loneliness, they cultivated in these gardens the moss on rocks and around trunks of trees.

Our greatest artist of tea ceremonies was Rikyu, in the sixteenth century. He had also been a great artist of the garden. When he was still an apprentice, his teacher ordered him to sweep the garden well so that he could serve tea. Rikyu swept it very carefully and did not leave even a tiny piece of rubbish or dried leaf on the ground; he stood back to admire it, but suddenly he felt something missing. He went to a tree and shook it, and the autumn leaves fell to the ground. Rikyu left them. The teacher came and saw the lane covered with leaves and understood; deeply moved, he put his hand on the head of his student and said to him: ‘I am no longer necessary; you are my superior.’”