Zenga Paintings

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ZENGA ARTS

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I have been practicing Zen for over 12 years now and I received my lay ordination as a Zen monk through the Detroit Street Zen Center (Soto tradition) in Los Angeles in March of 2000. During these last several years, I have been practicing Zen and the art of Zenga, a painting and sculpture tradition which is a spontaneous form of expression of the Spirit.

 

I am also a drummer and composer, and people have often told me that my compositions sound like paintings; rich in color and texture, evoking moods and visions of inner landscapes. I've tried to capture that ethos with these sculptures and paintings, some of which were used as the artwork for my newest album, appropriately titled "Zenga."

 

Zenga is a 500-year-old tradition that originates from Japan, although those roots can be traced even further back to the ancient Taoist art of China, where Taoism merged with Buddhism to become "Chan" as it is known in China, or Zen as we know it in the West. As a result of this early Taoist influence, the natural elements of earth, water, fire, air, and wind, the sun and the moon, the four seasons, as well as the Eastern concept of "emptiness", - all reoccurring themes in Zen philosophy and in my art.

 

Zenga is done after a period of deep mediation called "Zazen", when the mind has settled into its natural state of pure, awakened consciousness. It's hard to get there at first, but with practice, it becomes a natural state of being. And when you arrive at that place, you paint or sculpt - with a focused, determined intention. I've heard it said that the brush strokes in calligraphy are parallel to the strokes of the Samurai blade; swift, focused, and decisive, when the mind is in a state of "Mushin" or "No Mind." This is certainly the same mental state as Zenga, where the mind is free from attachment to anything, thus it is open to everything and all its possibilities. In a very real way, this is also the same mind of a musician right before the band starts to record a new song - because music is really just that, it is essentially a "sound painting."

 

The most common image used in Zenga is called the Enso, or "Circle of Enlightenment." As a drummer, I have been looking at circular drums and cymbals for 4 decades now, so I have been meditating on this shape long before I even realized the significance. The circular themes in my artwork reflect this as well, where the Enso is manifested as a painting or a three-dimensional clay structure. These circles represents the perfect, elegant, continuity of life, the emptiness from which all consciousness emanates, with no beginning and no end, everything as just "One Thing."

 

Emptiness, as it is known in the East, represents this pure consciousness, and the void at the center of the Enso represents this pure, awakened state, where Life and Death are one and the same thing. The gap that is left between the beginning and ending of the circle seems to have several meanings, but the one I find most interesting is that the small tip at the beginning of the Enso represents the beginning of life. As we move and progress around the circle, our lives naturally expand outward, just as the circle expands, and we manifest our lives into the many different ways that we touch people and the world itself. This is also a parallel teaching to the medicine wheel in Native American culture, where we travel this wheel endlessly, incarnating, disincarnating, living, dying, as we slowly evolve our Spirit.

 

And like any art form practiced through the medium of Zen, the individual's personality is expressed through the art form, whether it be music, painting, sculpture, or poetry. In my case, these sculptures are covered in different kinds of leafs and paints, which express different elemental, temporal, and spiritual awarenesses. Sometimes I even break the sculpture into small pieces and then glue the pieces back together, which represents the challenges and setbacks we all face in life, and we become strongest where we have been broken. And like the metaphor of the Shaman, who is spiritually dismembered and then reassembled into a more perfect form, so too are we as human beings, whose lives are an endless series of initiations, triumphs and defeats, literal "breakings", which make our spirits stronger still.

 

My paintings also done in various color schemes, and are enhanced with splashes of metallic paint, which represent the shimmering of the spirit. This is as much the influence of Jackson Pollack and abstract impressionism in general, as it is the Zen itself. Because to me, these colors, these shapes, and these textures represent the infinite, colorful, spiraling arcs of life.

 

Or the colors of sound if you like.

In Gassho,

Barrett Martin

 

Barrett's Zenga sculptures and paintings are being offered in conjunction with the release of his new solo album "Zenga." His sculptures are hand-formed out of natural clay, with gold, copper, or silver leaf applied. The paintings are done on natural brown or white paper and come in a variety of sizes. Each sculpture and painting is an original work of art that is totally unique, so they do not look exactly like the images shown on this page. However, they are done with the same extreme attention to detail and technique, color scheme, and most importantly, spiritual intention. Please email us directly if you wish to order a custom Enso sculpture or Zenga painting at: barrett@barrettmartin.com