Trying to Work Out the Meaning of Wabi-Sabi

I learned a new word/concept this week:

Wabi-sabi, the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection.

When I googled it I got a lot of images of interior design, all images of simplicity combined with a lot of irregular texture and natural colour tones.

So with this is mind I went out searching for imperfection and wabi-sabi. Is this wabi-sabi? Maybe with a lot of filters and graininess. It does follow my interpretation of the interior design philosophy. Then I googled ‘wabi-sabi artworks’ and was led to Gordon Smith, an artist whose work looked very familiar, both in the subjects and the work. Then I saw that he was from Vancouver, thus the familiarity of his subjects, and that he showed primarily at art galleries up on Granville, one of my haunts. This is the google search: gordon smith artist.

Inspired by Gordon Smith’s work, especially of ponds and reflections, I headed off to the nearest duck pond. With these shots I tried a Photoshop filter that I haven’t used much – it’s in the ‘Brush Strokes’ filters and it’s called Sumi-e. I had to look that up too – it’s a style of Japanese ink painting.It doesn’t look much like an ink painting to me, but it does have a Japanese quality to it – maybe more of a wood-cut look.  I went a bit crazy with the Sumi-e filter. This is some overgrown hops in the Arbutus Corridor.Some translucent plastic has been wrapped around this garden to protect the plants against the winter.Vines seen through hazy plastic on the Arbutus Corridor. More of the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Pick Your Own.