New Work

The Book of Hours 2010

These new paintings are hard to explain.  They have no top, or rather they have many.
Most are views inside my favorite bar.  In that place everyone has their own point of view.
Each painting has writing to go with it, each part with a different way up.
These pieces are meant to be folded into a sort of a book.  But displayed on a frame that makes them resemble a kite.

"Buildings don't make books."

It is one of my favorite quotes, from a former president of Misuzu Books.  One of the secretaries had complained about the old building they were all working in.  It was his answer.

Sitting in my dirty broken down studio with some visitors last spring I was a little taken back looking around, wondering  what they must have thought of the place.  I have had a remarkable string of famous people and millionaires lately - the paper on the fusuma was all broken, the tatami is from the early Showa era, rubbed clean through in places.

They can not know how important is my squalor - if I had nice clean tatami I would spend half my energy not spilling ink on it.  If the fusuma were new I wouldn't pin works in progress to it for drying.

It is not a showroom, but a working studio.

spreading ink

The first thing I do is grind my ink.  The second is to mix different gradations of ink for painting. 

It is a little depressing to find that the random patterns in the paint dishes when mixing are often more beautiful than my paintings.  The same thing used to happen when oil painting, the pallet, or a scraped away canvas looking better than a finished painting. 

The same thing happens to stock traders I am told, beaten by the market itself or a monkey with a dart board.

Money, art, culture, it is hard to beat the random.

But still we try.