Haiku
In this exhibition, Jo Lewis’s recent watercolours reach a profound yet understated place. Echoing the mirrored, poetic structure of the haiku, this series of twenty paintings explores the boundaries of a pre-defined space. Within these limits, she turns toward the most essential elements. While her wider practice includes large-scale watercolour and ink works often made in or near bodies of water, here those environmental influences recede.
The mark-making is pared back to its essence, the palette restrained, the scale intimate.
Bashō (Japanese 17th-century poet)
Is there any good in saying everything?
The appreciation of haiku is a collaboration between poet and reader: one exposes something to the light, the other brings it into fullness. It is both half-stated and under-stated. David Cobb
Each painting begins with a single horizontal brushmark - a gesture that organises the white space. The second, and each that follows, responds to the last as Lewis seeks the internal logic that binds them in an additive process. Through this sequence, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Each mark is integral to the next, forming a quiet poetry. Every work is an exploration. Confronting the blank page, the first stroke dismantles its void and transforms absence into presence - a concept echoing Lee Ufan’s reflections on the “pulsations of the invisible,” in which all things are permeated.
The transparency and uncompromising nature of watercolour are fully apparent in this series: each painting is a complete record of its own making. Repeated gestures - the horizontal brushmarks - reveal differences and points of departure within the confines of the space.
Within the series, colour assumes a central role, valued not only for its sensory force but also for the relationships it forms with neighbouring pigments, often visible only at an edge, an overlap, or an underlay. It is here that the works’ most subtle and complex qualities emerge.
Awareness and acceptance are hallmarks of haiku, and they give rise to an affirmative attitude toward solitude, loss, and even pain. David Cobb
Put simply: you must be quiet to see these works. Quietude is a state of attention. There are no thoughts, only watching and listening. Time suspends. A gentle bliss follows.
