Koike Chikyoku Kachozu 5

📝ONGO's Reflection

This is a flower-and-bird painting by the Japanese artist Koike Chikyoku. Holding flower and bird in a delicate hand, this work grew from the tradition of Japanese painting. While acknowledging its origin, I see here a gaze that all cultures share. It is the heart that would carefully grasp the single moment of a flower and a bird that pause only briefly before passing. Beauty is more precious because it does not stay long. To carve and preserve that fleetingness on the canvas, rather than lament it, is one way of loving what vanishes. There are things made more precious by their brevity.