Traditional landscape painting

The term sansui literally means “mountains and water” and was later used to refer to both landscape paintings and rock gardens in Japan.

Simply put, traditional landscape painting allowed the beholder to comfortably remain here while being provided a view of mountains in a distant there. As they worked, landscape painters sought to imagine themselves being in the mountains.

Looking closely at traditional landscape paintings, we find they fall into four main categories or stages: paintings that plant us squarely here, on this level relative to the mountains; paintings that place us on a level heading heading toward the mountains; paintings that imagine us as having entered the mountains; and paintings that produce in us a state of meditative relaxation as if we were living deep in the mountains, free of all worldly care. In other words, paintings for those who wish to gaze at the mountains, go to the mountains, live in the mountains, and die in the mountains.