桜に小禽図

📝ONGO's Reflection

This is a bird-and-flower painting by the Japanese painter Watanabe Shotei, holding a small bird settled on a cherry-blossom branch. The bird, drawn with a light touch, seems about to take wing at any moment. In this painting I see the virtue of lightness. The small bird does not press the branch with its weight; it is buoyant, as if having stayed a while and made ready to depart. That lightness between staying and leaving is itself what creates vitality. One who knows how to stay lightly, not seizing all things, lives more freely.