Japanese micro-season: Sawa mizu kōri tsumeru (沢水氷る)

Meaning: Water freezes on streams

This micro season marks a moment in deep winter when streams and watercourses begin to freeze. Movement slows across the landscape and the world feels suspended in quiet stillness.

Rigden’s painting captures this fragile threshold between motion and stillness. Pale tones and delicate textures suggest water gradually turning to ice while subtle shifts of colour hint at the current that continues beneath the frozen surface.

Micro Season

Imogen Rigden’s exhibition Micro Season takes inspiration from the traditional Japanese calendar of seventy two micro seasons, known as Shichijūni kō (七十二候). Rather than dividing the year into four broad seasons, this ancient system breaks the natural cycle into subtle seasonal moments lasting only a few days.

Each micro season observes a small shift in the natural world. Ice begins to form on streams, butterflies appear in the spring air, or insects retreat underground as autumn approaches.

Rigden adopts this poetic framework as a way of observing the landscapes of northern Europe. Working with water soluble oils, she builds layered paintings that evoke atmosphere, movement and memory rather than literal description. Her works translate fleeting environmental changes into colour, texture and gesture.

Together the paintings form a quiet meditation on time, landscape and the subtle rhythms that shape the natural world.