'Ancient Waterfall Scroll'
I am carving into a beautiful piece of birch plywood. The dark part you see here is actually the glue between the layers of ply. I am thinking Japanese scrolls, Japanese woodblock prints, the floating world of Japan and the work of
Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) 1760 – 1849
https://www.artsy.net/artist/katsushika-hokusai
You may know of his work:
I find this quote attributed to Hokusai most inspiring:
In the postscript to this work, Hokusai writes: “ From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie. ”
So I study his work and then carve and paint my interpretation. In my un-mastered skill of carving and seeing. The older I get the more I realize how much more there is to learn.
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Here after much carving with chisel and hammer I finally get to the details.
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And now I begin the painting. I use thinned acrylic paints and ink in many layers and go back and carve into the color. It is a process that I have worked out over the years that gives me the depth and feel I enjoy. I will also leave much of that beautiful grain show through. It looks like water already near the bottom of the scroll doesn't it?
Oh, I love to trick the eye.
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I am planning on completing this work in the next few days in time for the up coming
May, 2015 exhibit at my favorite gallery:
Ciel Gallery
128 East Park Avenue
Charlotte, NC 28203
phone: 704.496.9417
704-496-9417
hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 - 6,
Gallery Crawl, Southend, Charlotte - first Friday of every month 11 - 9
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I thank you for visiting my blog.
ON THE EASEL - to be continued
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