Sacred ink
Ink from charred lotus petals
Sacred lotus ink is as remarkable, and unexpected, as the final artworks. Morrison creates ink from charred lotus petals distilled with pure Battambang rainwater. Annually he collects used donations of blessed flowers gifted during the Lord Buddha’s birthday. A lunar holiday, this date falls at the end of Cambodia’s Prang dry season and during the monsoon, Vossaa wet season. He set out trays to collect rainwater, which is later filtered.
Rainwater is important, as it symbolizes the pure, holistic life forces of Cambodia. I then brew the liquid for a further year, and sometimes longer. The recipe for my ink is honed from long years of research, combining techniques inspired by artisanal papermakers and traditional woodblock printers I’ve studied on travels across the region. In this way I offer a truly holistic ‘circle of life’ and original environmental approach to art, from pond to studio to display. The final ink has the consolidation of hundreds of people love and gratitude.
My ink is holy & blessed.
Like a rare distillate, this ink is a matter of quality over quantity.
A massive cartload of lotus requested after temple celebrations produces as little as a few cups of ink.
I create an organic ink medium from the materials I am painting with. This is a truly holistic, natural art process, beginning with Cambodian flowers and rainwater first sanctified then symbolically transformed.
Like the beauty of a lotus emerging from its murky origins, I transform the blessings of lotus flowers following the Lord Buddhaís birthday renewed with the life-giving monsoonal rainwaters of Southeast Asia.
l o t u s - c o u n t s
as of 13 Dec, 2022
I've created a total off
612,614 lotus marks
n e w s
WINNER
DIFFA CHICAGO
International Artist Award
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This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.