5 weeks a tea drinker tea stain prints on watercolour paper (x5), 2017  (click on image to cycle through)

 

Zen monks drank tea as a means of staying awake and maintaining awareness during their sitting meditations.

An old Zen story details how Bodhidarma (the first patriarch of Zen) drowsed off momentarily during a nine year meditation. He was so enraged with himself at this that he drew a knife and sliced off his eyelids and from the soil where his eyelids fell grew the first tea plants.

Resting a mug of tea on my notebook on one cold grey morning at work i noticed a tea stain that resembled the Zen brushstroke. It seemed very apt that it was tea which had formed this symbol and how this had been formed by  a completely chance operation.

i drink a lot of tea so figured i might as well capitalize on this fact and over the course of 5 weeks collected every stain from every mug or pot of tea i brewed on watercolour paper.