A wonderful art filled week

Aaah, what a wonderful art filled week that was! Since my Japanese class was rescheduled to Thursday last week, I had a chance to join some friends on a trip to a local museum and tea house on Tuesday. We visited the Furukawa Art Museum where they had a beautiful exhibition about the jour seasons of Japan. I particularly enjoyed the vibrant colors and beautiful lines and was fascinated by the painting techniques used. It was very interesting to see the different traditional ways of presenting the artworks, instead of a frame the paintings are mounted using a combination of fabrics to create hanging scrolls or room divider screens.

At about three minutes walk from the museum there is a traditional Japanese tea house, which is part of the museum. The tea house is huge for Japanese standards and includes several exhibition rooms as well as a beautiful hidden garden. We enjoyed walking around the garden and exhibition rooms before settling down for the traditional matcha and sweets which was served in beautiful matcha bowls which were created by different pottery artists.

Pictured were not allowed inside the museum and tea house but I will share some pics from the beautiful garden below.

On Friday we had our first Yamato-e class of the year! As my painting was almost finished I was very eager to get back to it. I managed to finish it most of the way, except for some very special gold dust techniques which sensei will teach me about in the next class. I did already pick my next painting, which will include more of the gold dust, just so I can get a bit of extra practice with this new technique!

At the end of the week we were surprised by a beautiful blanket of snow here in Nagoya, which made for some nice views from my studio window! It also made snuggling up in my warm, cozy little studio extra enticing, I managed to finish one of the pieces I was working on and get a second one most of the way there. I expect this week I will be able to finish that second one and hopefully get a good start on the third!