Local Stone Baby, Nara sumi ink on Kanazawa washi

 Seki-jin (stone people) October 1999, JiMuSoAn, Yanaka, Tokyo. A quick look at a reference book tells us that Japanese stone jizos are likenesses of Ksitigarbha, Sanskrit for “womb of the earth,” one of the most popular bodhisattvas in Japanese Buddhism, usually represented as a monk with a jewel in one hand and a staff in the other.  Jizo’s vow to help all suffering beings has made him a very popular figure from the Heian period (794-1185) on.  The references also mention that jizo is often “syncretized with native deities.”  It is particularly associated with helping children, travelers, and those beings suffering in hell.

 This syncretizing interests me most, older deeper things that still live under the veneer of newer religions, like the pagan tree spirit inside the Christian Christmas tree.  Universal, rather than primitive, images that have been part of us from even before we evolved into what we call modern man. 

All of the paintings are painted with brush, sumi ink and a little traditional color on hand made Japanese Washi paper.  

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