wuxing: meditation on process 5, 2023

This piece, watercolor on birch panel, is the fifth in a series called "wuxing: meditation on process."

Each of the pieces in this series begins with color fields roughly corresponding to the colors (yellow, green/blue, red, black, white) associated with the wuxing (“five phases") of Chinese philosophy. I say “roughly" because the colors themselves are fluid and the “phases" (xing) are active. My focus in this series is process, and I approach wuxing in much the same way William James approached consciousness – as the flight of a bird that perches from time to time along its way. The perch (or the bird perching) may catch our eye, but it is only a moment in the flight, which is the heart of the matter.

Each piece begins with blue, red, and yellow and explores the way these “primaries" intersect with the five colors of wuxing. Yellow is the color of earth, red the color of fire. Blue is part of “qing" (青), which ranges from green through blue to black. When blue and yellow meet, they create a field of green (the color of wood). When green meets red, the result is a brown field shading to black as more red and even more blue are added. That accounts for four of the five colors of wuxing (yellow for earth, green for wood, red for fire, and black for water). The colors come together as water, brush, knife, and/or other implements carry pigment across the page, “imitating Nature," as John Cage said, “in her manner of operation," a dance, full of surprises. The fifth color, white (the color of metal), is present in the simple wood frame.