KATHMANDU
Siddhartha Art Gallery at Babermahal Revisited, which was closed for the last nine months due to the pandemic, has reopened with the exhibition "A Single Brushstroke: Chan Mind Spiritual Painting" by Jerome Edou.

Edou, originally from France has been living in Nepal for more than three decades now. He says, “My paintings are the combination of spirituality, meditation and art. For me art is to express my inner meditative realization in my paintings.”

Edou is a Chan painter and a Buddhist scholar who has been painting this form using black ink on white paper for around 12 years where he explains, “Chan paintings have four main characteristics — breathe, simplicity, emptiness and Zen — where we don’t try to reproduce nature but just the suggestion of nature, through few brush strokes, which is often said it’s with the brush that artist is trying to show visible approach of invisible, of unspoken realities and spiritual experience into visible form.”

The exhibition features monochrome Chan paintings and visiting the gallery gives you a feel of serenity and calmness. In most of his paintings, one can see the use of plum trees, orchids, chrysanthemum and bamboo as his major motifs, while there are a few paintings dedicated to rural landscapes. According to him, plum trees, orchids, chrysanthemum and bamboo are the four gentlemen during the basic training of Chan painting.

In the painting 'Miracle on the swamp' he has painted flowers and leaves without having much details, placed on the center of the canvas. The leaves in black seem to expand their territory, while the white space on each side tends to accentuate the beauty of the flowers and leaves.

Talking about the difference in painting at the initial stage and at present, he shares, “At the beginning you have the brush with ink, water observant paper then water and ink is spreading everywhere. After 10 years you start to understand a little bit more of what you are trying to do with your brush. So, it is a bit of a technique because the brush is going all over the place and water ink is a bit complicated. After 10 years, I can say I started to understand how to use my brush, to do what I would like to do with it, instead of just the brush doing it itself.”

The exhibition which began on December 11 continues till January 9.