Why paint? Why ink?

A group of 8th graders came to my studio for a school project. One of their questions - What do I like about ink painting? I didn’t answer clearly. I had been having a personal crisis wondering where painting fits as our culture changes so radically. It was hard to put things into words, especial with painting, which is a language not easily translated into another.

With the plague raging I have been home painting every day since. It has reminded me why I like ink painting.

A good ink painting does not tell you what to think or to see. A good ink painting allows you, required you, to create meaning. It is like a zen puzzle. It is not didactic. There is no answer and none the less you create it.

This sort of abstraction has not been mainstream fashion here for five hundred years. There are no bright or pretty colors. No sound. It doesn’t move. You can’t push buttons to get points.

It is silent., still, and only has the meaning that you can bring to it.

Enoshima

Dong-po Giving Three Lessons to his Maidservants

Tessai, Tomioka said, “Read a thousand books and walk a thousand miles.” He was an educated Edo man, born in 1836. He studied with the artists of the Bunjin-ga, literati painters. He was also a calligrapher of merit. He usually wrote on his paintings and expected people to read his writing before looking at his painting. He lived all the way thru the long Meiji Era, a time of great change. By the time he died the average Japanese could not read his writing. It had become archaic.

I was lucky to attend an exhibition of his paintings at the National Museum of Modern Art, the one near Takebasi, in 1997. the paintings were wonderful as were the English translations of the titles. My favorite made me laugh out loud was for a paintings of dozens and dozens of men talking , “Meeting of Hermits.” Where I come from hermits don’t have meetings. Different cultures.

This painting is based on one of the titles, Dong-po Giving Three Lessons to his Maidservants. I put Dong-po in Yanaka, at the top of the Fuji-mi-zaka hill. I hope he and Tessai will forgive me. These sorts of things happen when yo are locked in avoiding the virus.

1997, hard to believe it has been 23 years ago I attended that exhibition. Ill be as archaic as Tessai’s writing soon.

Social Distancing

The best thing I did today was fix that kid on the slide from yesterday, fix his top arm. It was a stick. Now it is an arm.

It is spring break at the university in Japan, my time to paint. I practice social distancing this season every year.

The air is heavy with corona fear. It creeps into my painting.

Parks and playgrounds in Tokyo are full. The schools are closed. Mothers go nuts with the kids inside. So all the kids come to bump and touch in the park.

Are my paintings topical?

My next exhibition is October. I’m thinking we will not have forgotten corona by October, but it will be a whole lot less interesting by then.

Before

After

Signing a rooftop

I thought I was finished climbing on the roof, but had not signed the dragon. How does one sign a roof?

A friend recommended my web address.

I went with a seal.

Jame MacNeil Whistler sighed with a dancing butterfly. It became his mark. I signed my dragon with a hunting horn. It is purported to be the Hathaway family crest. America didn’t have family crests. No royalty in America thank you very much. Perhaps that is why we wanted them. I don’t believe the Hathaway family in England was ever in a position high enough to warrant a crest, but we picked one up along the way and claimed it.

I recall seeing it in a book on my fathers shelf, “Hathaways in America.” the crest was the only illustration in a thick listing of people named Hathaway, in America, published by Hathaways for their own consumption.

Broke it

I broke the little spoon I use to dip water to make ink. I didn’t think about the thing until I broke it. I can’t remember where I bought it or when. It was from one of the specialty shops serving the sumi ink using community in Ueno.

Like the spoon, I didn’t think about those shops until they were gone. They died quietly. No horns, bells or whistles like a pachinko. One by one they folded.

I had no spoon, and no place to buy a new one.

There are lots of ways to move water, but I was used to my little cup, and my dipping spoon. It didn’t matter that it looked like a swans head. It was tool I had used enough to forget it was there. I didn’t have to think when I used it.

I missed my spoon.

I missed the shop that sold it.

I went over to Jimbocho. Both their painting shops were gone as well. There just aren’t enough of us to keep them alive. Ouch. I just had a birthday, and was feeling older by the second.

Dinosaur Jim.

The good news is that I fixed the spoon with some epoxy and a thin steel nail.

The bad news is that my favorite kind of painting, while not mainstream for 150 years, seems to be about to dry up and blow away.

A Jug Band Song

Mama said to Papa, be quiet as a mouse

So Papa climbed up on the top of the house

Made a lot of whoopee, made a lot of noise

Stood up and cheered with the rest of the boys,

Baby's in the cradle, brother's on the town

Sister's in the parlor, trying on a gown

Mama's in the kitchen, messing all around

And Papa's on the housetop, he won't come down

I've been on the roof. First I was painting rust. When it was white again a dragon was suggested. But for whom to see? My little shack is landlocked on the narrowest of streets. Make a painting for no one on corrugated steel when I could at any moment slide off to my doom? I wouldn't do it. 

But in the back of my closet was a can of paint. I stirred it. Before I knew it I was back on the roof. Now I have a new dragon painted for google and god, it's only possible audience. Though I doubt either one has noticed.