About Mindful Marbling
“The happiest people spend much time in a state of flow – the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter…. Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. “
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (renowned Hungarian-American psychologist)
Suminagashi with it’s original roots in China is a traditional Japanese art form which translates as spilled ink or floating ink. At it’s most simple suminagashi is the art of using the surface tension of water to place inks on the surface to create compositions.
Suminagashi is a form of marbling but is fundamentally different from other forms of marbling in that it necessitates floating ink on water, whilst all other forms of marbling involves floating ink on a denser medium like a (traditionally) gelatinous seaweed gel. The use of gel provides almost complete control over the movement and spread of the ink and the image created. Images can be reliably recreated again and again, much like a printing process.
The use of water in suminagashi forces the artist to relinquish full control of the image and focus instead on creating harmonious compositions with the water itself. A relationship, dialog, forms between the artist and the water. The artist can guide the water to a certain extent through experience and technique but ultimately must learn to relax into a symbiotic relationship with the water, much like a surfer catching waves in the ocean. With this relinquishing of complete control the practitioner of suminagashi is freed from inhabiting the future notion of end result and can relax fully into inhabiting the creative flow state of the present moment.
About the artist
Atist and educator Lisa Ibbetson has been exploring and working with the art of suminagashi since 1997 when she discovered it by chance whilst studying at Glasgow School of Art. She has spent the following years practising, refining her skills and learning to dance with the element of water.
“As my pieces are created on the moving surface of water, I am constantly playing with the concept of harmony and balance. I must achieve a delicate equilibrium between control and letting go, between intention and allowing the ink to flow freely. A collaboration, meditation / dance between myself as artist and the element of water is created, then delicately captured and preserved on paper. The result unique non repeatable - reflecting the truism of transience of all experience. When I create my intention is to get out of my own way and allow the water to guide me into a state of pure creative flow. What I particularly love is how the hypnotic movement of the water can be retained in the captured image.”
