Dear Mr Richie,

I have to write you even though you are dead.  I was walking up towards your place, your old place, before you moved to Ueno.  I was on the way to my studio from a night down the hill in my pub.  I stopped at Akafudado to get a little more beer and some senbai or something to eat with it when I ran into Doritos.  Can you believe it, Doritos.  when I first came here they didn't even have cheese.  How was it when you arrived?  I guess they didn't even have a store back then, the streets were rubble and you must have lived on the American plan for a while till the locals got back on their feet.

Well now they have everything, all kinds of imported wine, "Hey Mr,  Give me chocolate,"  did you actually ever hear that when you first arrived?   Well now they would not even dane to bite a bar of Hersey's, too rough.  Got to have a Pokey, a Kit Kat is fine, good marketing here you know.

I was just walking by your old house, where you first lived when I first met you, and wanted to say hello.  I remembering you crossing in the middle of the street where I was walking and saying that you were a bad gaijin.  Decorated by the Emperor though, so I guess you weren't so verry bad.

You came to my first exhibition in Japan, because you were a neighbor, and because Mrs. Seki passed the invitation to you.  you used to copy your manuscripts there before you sent them off to the publisher.  I remember meeting you on the street and you announced that you had just posted, "Honorable Guests," about famous visitors to Japan.  You looked so happy that day.  It is a happy thing to get a new book in the mail, out of your hands and have it someone else's responsibility.  good book too.  I enjoyed reading every bit of it.

You were an old guy when I met you, still lots of vigor, but white haired and wearing some kind of baby blue polyester leisure suit that was too far out.  You were old.  I wonder, am I now the same age you were then? 

Winter time now, about the time we lost you.  Might be your anniversary, your first.  Soon anyway around Pearl Harbor Day. Take care.  I miss you.

selling on line

My sister heard a podcast from the public radio, some ex rapper selling his Sharpie drawings on the Internet to former rap fans.  "Its a good idea, JIm,  you should do this too!"

I get requests to buy things on line sometimes, but usually say no.  It doesn't seem right with something as personal as a painting to sell it to someone who has only seen a photo. 

Mostly I am an ink painter.  I use ink because it suits my hand and because it is the most sensitive, evolved materials humans have designed with for expressing a feeling, a line, directly from heart to hand to paper.  It moves fast.  It moves slowly.  Every twitch, every twist, every hesitation, is recorded directly on the paper.  It is honest, no tricks, lies.

But ink painting is not all I do.  Sometimes I etch. 

Etching is a different world altogether, indirect as can be, scratching lines on a piece of metal, covering it with a ground, scratching thru, letting it be bitten by acid, then scratched again and scraped and polished.  I found good results last year when I put it on my anvil and hit it with a hammer.  And when the copper plate is scratched, engraved, hammered and bitten it is smeared with ink then gently cleaned, rubbed and polished untill only what in the artists desires is left to be printed.  Then the plate is put on a press and squeezed tight between steel rollers to a moistened piece of paper, what comes out of the press is the result.

It is the art of Rembrandt, and the art of Blake.

Perhaps etchings are more appropriate to be sold on line.  Perhaps I will try.  And if i do, this will be my first.

Dragons in a Christmas Mandala

 

 

I found it last week in a book.  I had forgotten how much fun it was.  Prices, a better photo, and more information to follow if i decide to go thru with this.

Winter Lotus

I go to the pond when I am free these days.
Every day the lotus change.  They wither and dry.  Like soldiers on a field,  Some still, many fallen down, getting smaller, fading away.

 

  I come home and paint.

 But not only decay, there is the promise of life. 
I picked up a pod that floated on the water.  Out came seeds.

 

The measure of a man

The measure of a man, the measure of a life, How do you measure your life?  I measure my life not from birthday to birthday nor from January firsts.  I measure my life from show to show.  For over 20 years I have had exhibitions in October.  I have other chances to exhibit thru the years, but I measure my life from October to October exhibitions.

And now my years has done.  I am always in a turmoil as to what the next year will be. 

I am forced to take a break from paintingfrom the middle of the summer, to make scrolls and frames, to hang them on the wall, to greet visitors and friends.  Now it is done.  I have been away from painting for 2 1/2 months.  I have forgotten how to paint.  I have forgotten who I am.  November is a chance to start again and to find out who or what I have become.

Last Sunday I didn't do the things I was supposed to do.  Instead I hid in my studio and worked on this dragon.

 

 

thanks to all!

 

Thanks to all who made this years exhibition a success.  Ichiyo's shortcut through Yanaka.  It was a lot of fun to put it together and great to be able to share it with everyone who visited.  Now I go back to my studio and breath a quiet breath, sit in a clean room and wonder what will happen next.

Ichiyo Show Final Days

Today begins the third and last weekend. 

We have had 2 typhoons and a couple hundred visitors, good visitors, good friends.  Yesterday the director from the Higuchi Ichio Memorial Museum visited.  I wonder what she thought.  Whatever it was, she did not say.

 

It was a lot of fun to put it all together, to explore Ichiyo's life through her diaries, and then with my paint.

 

 

I wonder who will visit today on this chilly last Saturday day of the show, or tomorrow on the last  Sunday in the rain.  It is supposed to rain tomorrow;  perhaps it will be a heavy Kurosawa rain, and the exhibition will end like the Seven Samurai - swordplay, and rolling in the mud; Great heroes fall, evil is vanquished, a few survive, and the hard working, but cheerful farmers inherit the earth. One can only hope.

Exhibition underway, watch out for the stairs.

 

My studio was built in the Taisho Era. Some of the younger visitors have not used these sort of stairs.  Narrow, no hand rail, and slippery as hell, fine wood polished by a thousand feet. 

          I only had one visitor come sliding down, bumping his butt each step and screaming each bump.  Made a wonderful noise in my little studio.  He got every head in the place to turn in horror.  Then, boom, he hit the wall at the bottom and like it was a cartoon or something, the painting above him fell off the wall and he caught it in his lap as he sprawled on the floor.  A dozen people all shouted in Japanese, "Are You All Right!"  as they will.

             He jumped up, holding the painting in one hand and his butt with the other saying, "I'm OK! I'm OK!"  Handed me the painting and ran out the door.  In America I guess he would be running to get his lawyer.  Lucky this is Japan.

 

Today begins the long weekend, middle of the exhibition.  Yanaka should be jumping.  nice weather and some kind of local festival, "Yanaka Matsuri!"  Lots of visitors.  Wonder if  any of them will come sliding down my stairs.