Artist’s Reception: Joan Watts: Zazen

Joan Watts: Zazen
artist’s reception: Friday, May 31, 5-7 pm
on view: May 31–June 29, 2024

These colors reach into you. Pierce the sternum, fill the solar plexus, root in the gut. Jewel-toned maroon, shadowed forest green, cool wet slate, warm turned earth, heart-of-iris purple, deepest navy sky: these rich and saturated colors anchor and ground the bottom halves of a series of square-format paintings. Rising from these fertile beds of redolent color blooms a collection of pale contrasting tones: petal yellow, sage green, fog, and topaz, palest aquamarine.

The series of paintings by Joan Watts, Zazen, included in this eponymous exhibition was featured in an exhibition in Wiesbaden, Germany at Galerie Ulrike Buschlinger in the late 1990s and has never before been shown in the United States.

These pieces, as the title suggests, focus particularly on the primary, essential practice of Buddhism: zazen, or sitting meditation. These pieces move the viewer from macrocosm to microcosm, from outward to inward, from distance to closeness. In keeping with the essential paradoxes at the heart of Buddhist practice, Watt’s work balances the qualities of precision and structure with a flowing and intuitive expression.

Take time to breathe with each piece in Zazen. Allow them to guide you.

– Michaela Kahn, Ph.D.