Suzuki Kiitsu's "Flowers of Autumn and Winter" is an amazing piece of art belonging to the later Rinpa School, and showing the artist's great talent for blending vivid abstraction and strict naturalism. Executed with ink and bright colors on a glowing gold leaf background, the painting reflects the tender transformation from one season to another. The right part of the painting is dominated by the vivid beauty of autumn represented by the images of chrysanthemum, morning glory and bush clover. Further movement towards the left reveals the presence of the winter flora characterized by the image of narcissus which survives the frost. Kiitsu employs the iconic technique of tarashikomi from the Rinpa school that involves dropping wet ink or paint onto pools of wet colors to create highly stylized organic patterns on the leaves and stems. Instead of representing a natural garden, the artist creates an elaborate arrangement of the plants in a floating composition. The dazzling golden background removes the sense of depth and turns the natural setting into an eternal decorative pattern. It is through such a poetic contrast that Kiitsu elevates a botanical image to a powerful contemplation of time and transience. While conventional Western art employs linear perspective to establish a realistic scene, Kiitsu plays around with the spatial arrangements of his composition in order to create a feeling of being inside a garden. Kiitsu has arranged the vegetation growing closest to the ground within the upper right corner of the canvas. This unique composition has the effect of making your eyes focus upwards towards something below you. Kiitsu offsets his stiff lines with the unpredictability of the tarashikomi technique. He achieves this by adding the green paint to the wet puddles of black ink on the leaves and stems, letting the paints blend into each other. In this way, he gets a mossy texture that will not make the realistically depicted plants look lifeless.
Kiitsu's screen turns the passing of the seasons into a quiet garden scene. Autumn flowers like chrysanthemum and morning glory fill the right side with rich color, while the narcissus on the left stands for winter, surviving the cold. The gold background removes depth, so the plants seem to float outside of time. The soft, mossy blending of ink and green paint (tarashikomi) keeps the plants alive and natural. For me, the painting is about how beauty is short-lived but also peaceful.
