Memoires of the Osmund Mountain House 1932

Watase Ryōun made this ink on paper piece, "Memoires of the Osmund Mountain House," and you can just picture his hand moving across the surface, the brush dancing and pausing, deciding, each mark an extension of his thought. I'm thinking about the physicality of the ink, how it pools and feathers on the page. Each stroke carries not just meaning, but also the weight and speed of Ryōun's gesture. There’s a real conversation going on between the artist and the paper, a kind of call and response that only ink can produce. You can sense Ryōun working within a tradition, echoing the masters but also pushing against it, making it his own. Artists are always in dialogue, riffing off each other, borrowing, and transforming. Ultimately, it’s about expression, about finding a way to externalize something internal, something felt. And maybe, just maybe, we catch a glimpse of that feeling too.