Elegant Clean Energy Haiku VIII: Quantum Leap Haiku Illustration

Himeji Castle

t-shirt serigraph

This t-shirt I bought in Japan has a silk-screened design that is either the Japanese characters spelling out the words ‘Himeji Castle’ or a 17-shape haiga painting of the castle. Or both. I haven’t yet finished any of the paintings I started while I was in Japan, so I’ve added this design and the following quotations about haiku and haiga to the series of blog posts on Elegant Clean Energy Haiku I started on July 29 

“Both haiku and haiga translate nature through an artistic language with spiritual immediacy and selfless skill. This is achieved through Zen-like training in contemplation and technique. When the artist has reached the state of wu hsin (no-mind), a plane of mental relaxation and manual dexterity, Tao* can then take control and work through the artist’s hand and eye. This superconscious state is not to be confused with the subconscious swamp in which the surrealists find themselves.”  – On Haiku and Haiga: an essay, by Harold Stewart

 * Tao is a ‘path’ or process rather than a theory – a term used as a convention to refer to something that otherwise cannot be discussed in words.

“Haiku poet and haiga artist alike endeavored to eliminate every superfluous element and to attain an austere beauty, akin to that of abstract art...”  – Haiku Painting, by Leon Zolbrod

When the haiku writer and illustrator is a computer app, these essentially heuristic processes are going to have to be more algorithmic – well, totally algorithmic actually.  It should be possible to get around this apparent contradiction in terms through the provision for some manual input by the user.