A trio of Vancouver artists explores nagomi in Perception of Balance, to April 5

At VisualSpace Gallery, Gillian Armitage, Esther Rausenberg, and Richard Tetrault reflect on their travels through Japan

By Janet Smith

Richard Tetrault’s Dark Reflections.

Gillian Armitage’s Matter of Balance I.

Esther Rausenburg’s Interlocking Circle.

Perception of Balance runs March 20 to April 5 at the VisualSpace Gallery

IN JAPAN, THE word nagomi denotes an aesthetic sense of balance—creating a calm and comfort that’s hard to translate. Now a new exhibit is exploring that theme through photographs, paintings, and prints.

​Participating artists Gillian Armitage, Richard Tetrault, and Esther Rausenberg have all travelled to different parts of Japan, returning home with works that reflect the concept of symmetry and serene balance.

Mixed-media artist Armitage travelled from Honshu to Kyushu to Shikoku and beyond, taking her inspiration from 300-plus photographs shot during the trip. Diving into Zen aesthetics and balance of colour and form, she works with methods like collage on wood panel.

Tetrault draws on the theme of water—with stylized koi ponds and cascades appearing in some of the works. In the well-known muralist, painter, and printmaker’s journey, the most impactful location was Mitaki-dera, a Buddhist temple in the hills surrounding Hiroshima that survived the 1945 atomic bomb, with waterfalls used in the yearly Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony. “While traveling in Japan, I felt the reverence that is evident in the country for water, as manifest in sacred waterfalls, rice fields and ponds of koi,” he writes in his artist statement.

And as for Rausenberg, the artist and Eastside Culture Crawl artistic and executive director summons nagomi through photography, finding harmony and balance in her shots of Japanese ponds and hills, “from the elegance of small, meticulously tended gardens to the vast serenity of expansive landscapes,” as she puts it in her artist statement.

Don’t be surprised to find the nagomi effect rubbing off amid all this imagery—and allowing you to breath a little bit easier. After all, the philosophy is just as much about inner peace. 

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