Richard Lee's Gallery: No. 3

Richard Lee's Gallery: No. 3 The watercolor [bottom row, far right] is after a drawing made by Sengai, a Zen teacher and calligrapher. I found it in a marvelous book I own called Sengai: The Zen of Ink and Paper. It was written by D.T. Suzuki, the famous scholar of Zen who made Zen, in fact, available to the West. I like Sengai a lot. He was also a poet. The Sengai character is so archetypical that I found I had to have him in my gallery of characters. But I made several changes. There are some words on the drawing that acknowledge my indebtedness. They look like some kind of esoteric calligraphy.
The [image in the top row, left side] is a watercolor, making use of the so-called sacred symbols:

watercolor, geometric design

the circle, the square, and the triangle. It may be a bit esoteric, but I have used the sacred symbols for a long time. Sengai also used them. As if such symbols were the building blocks of design.

- Richard Lee

watercolor, entrance

watercolor, desert flowers

watercolor, children of the desert
watercolor and ink illustrations by Richard Lee

watercolor, Sengai

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