Haboku (Splashed-Ink) Landscape

A mountain, a cliff, a wineshop's flag, a fisherman poling a boat, all conjured from a handful of wet, half-controlled blots of ink dashed onto the paper and left to bleed. This is the 'splashed ink' manner, haboku, where the brush moves so fast that the accident of the ink carries the image. Sesshu, a Zen monk and the towering figure of Japanese ink painting, made it as a parting gift for a departing pupil and inscribed it with a long colophon, a note written on the work itself. Restraint pushed to the edge of abstraction.