Journey From The West Painting

it is an interpretation of a Buddhist story in a 6th century text called ‘Journey to the West’ about a priest who goes west to India in search of enlightenment. A classic and globally understandable ‘quest of the chosen one’ narrative set within the structure of various tasks to be completed, seen globally through historical heroism lore, from the Labours of Hercules to the Miracles of Christ. In the story is that the priest is accompanied by Sun Wukong, ‪the monkey king‬, who is set to protect the priest in penance for upsetting the gods with his own hubris. They are in a forest one night and in danger, and Sun Wukong draws a circle on the ground around the priest and says “if you stay in the circle, nothing can harm you. Not the tigers nor the leopards, wolves, monsters or fiends (referred to as ‘the many i’s’), but you must stay in the circle’. The circle is interpreted as the first purity and wholeness, as is the case with the platonic sphere and the ‘mind’s eye’. The story tells that if you maintain a clear mind bad and tumultuous thoughts cannot harm you. In a reversal of this eastern aesthetic the painting puts all ‘the many i’s’ already within the circle (the leopard, tigers, wolf, dragon scales and naked female form), with the larger circle together two make up the western eye in abstract. the universal masculine symbol of the triangle pointing upward, in blue as a western interpretation of gender definition, and a pink rectangle as feminine, both in turn geographically in front of a simplified represention of a Torii gate. All these things are meant as inferences though as the viewer is encouraged to colonise their own understanding of the work. This encouragement itself is inspired by Japan’s own appropriation of other cultural elements, the Chinese story for one and its artistic developments as another. Also, there have never been tigers in japan, nor woves, the images I have put within the circle have all come from Edo period japanese paintings. The artists themselves would never have seen any of the subjects but would have taken their own interpretation of form from skins of the animals or other works down by other people, I am continuing this tradition of interpretation. The addition of the naked woman as ‘fiend or demon’ is a play on sexual mores and ideas of fear and femininity within the culture, not just in japan but any patriarchal system.