Bonsai art takes a lot of practice, patience and dedication. But it also requires an appreciation of the process. Bonsai artists shape their trees through pruning, wiring and clamping branches, grafting and limiting growth to a specific design. This is how the works achieve their enduring beauty. They’re not like driftwood sculptures, or even dead tree art. They’re still living, evolving, changing pieces of art that are never finished.
The roots of bonsai date back to the earliest Chinese horticulturalists who created miniature landscapes in trays called penjing (or penzai). When the Japanese arrived in China, they took this concept and made it their own. They based it heavily on Zen Buddhist principles, which encouraged balance and harmony and demanded a certain simplicity of design.
Ryan is a practitioner of this tradition, but his work breaks from some of the strict rules that define Japanese bonsai. He and others like him are attempting to bridge the gap between what bonsai is considered in the East and what it’s come to mean in the West.
These Western practitioners have an innate respect for the Japanese ethos, but they want to push the medium beyond what was originally intended. Their goal is to encourage more people to appreciate the joys of bonsai. It will take a collective effort from a dedicated community to grow the conversation and evolve a more inclusive understanding of what bonsai can be. This is the only way to truly push this art form forward.