AN EXERCISE IN TRIMMING

Roadside Ikebana has been travelling from Adelaide to Torquay. A 725 km journey that takes over 8 hours. It is more like 9 - 10 hours when allowing for lunch break, etc. We, Laurie and I, have come to the conclusion that it is more pleasant to do this over two days rather than arrive exhausted. Hence the delay in this posting.

We stayed overnight in the rural city of Horsham, ( city and surrounds population 16,000 +). One of the delightful surprises for us was to come across a beautiful linear park that has been created along the banks of the Wimmera river that runs through the city.

This photo includes Laurie admiring the reflection of the sunset in the river. It is particularly wide at this point because of a weir a little further downstream. 

Close by, above the path, I noticed a hanging sculpture in the form of an aboriginal fish-trap. 

I was in Adelaide to attend two days of workshops being led by Master Instructor Mori, from Sogetsu HQ Tokyo; and I intend to post some photographs next week. Master Mori presented workshops in Brisbane on the previous weekend and if you have a Facebook account you may find information and photos through this link. (No promises).

My ikebana this week show the importance of "trimming", which can be explained as removing excess leaves or side branches to reveal the essence of some botanical material. As Master Mori commented in one of his workshops: "Ikebana is an art of subtraction". That is, as distinct from addition. Traditional oil painting for example would be in the latter, "art of addition" category. 

Above is a photo of a wonderfully wind-shaped branch that I found on the beach. I saw beautiful lines within the mass of lines and spent quite some time revealing them, Below is the branch used in an simple ikebana arrangement.

After trimming I set the branch in a ceramic ikebana vessel and added two green lines to give it a feeling of freshness and life. The green lines are Dietes Grandiflora leaves.

The ikebana vessel was made by the Victorian ceramic artist, Tom Cockram.

Belated greetings from Christopher

27th April 2026