Jikan means time in Japanese, but I'm using it as defined by Pico Iyer in his book "The Art of Stillness", where it refers to the silence between two thoughts.* Iyer speaks of the luxury and beauty of the empty space - whether in the rests of a piece of music, or the blank space on the written page. I'm exploring this idea in the empty spaces on a canvas that give the viewer's "imagination room to breathe".
So, 'Cloud Jikan' draws one to ponder the quiet, empty space between the tiny rain cloud and the buildings beneath. What magic lies within the silence between two thoughts?
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*Note: The singer Leonard Cohen used Jikan as his monk name when he lived at Mount Baldy Zen Center, exploring Zen Buddhism. He is one example in Pico Iyer's book, which muses on the power of stillness in our tech-hurried world.
You can watch Iyer's 2014 TED Talk of the same name:
ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_the_art_of_stillness
- Subject Matter: Urban landscape
- Created: 2022
- Collections: 2022 Liminal Transcendence