LOREN FRIESEN GALLERY

BRIDGE OVER IRISES: the artist's view

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The Japanese aesthetic sense is second nature to me, having grown up in Japan with traditional architecture, woodblock prints, paintings, pottery, flower arrangements, and their wonderfully refined sense of craftsmanship. It is an aesthetic that I love, and is infused in me and my art. Of course there are other influences from other sources as well. But I want to focus on two aspects of Japanese art, evident in Bridge Over Irises, that particularly impact me.

 

One is the strong sense of negative space–for example, the white space on black-ink-brush drawings on white paper, where the empty, negative space is as important as the black brush strokes. Or the negative spaces or air between the flowers, leaves and stems of a traditional Japanese flower arrangement, which are not just blank, but are as important as the flowers themselves. Even the music of the shakuhachi (the hauntingly beautiful bamboo flute) creates silence between the sounds. Western music can be interspersed with silence, but doesn't create it. Traditional Japanese artists create this space with focused skill and intentionality. It is not just a blank area with nothing in it in a drawing or in a flower arrangement or in a piece of music. It is something that they consciously create that can be tangibly seen or heard.

 

So, in my giclée prints I am very conscious of the space between things–of how shapes interact with each other, and whether they resonate with each other across distance. Should the size or shape be adjusted? Should the angle be sightly changed? Should it be moved over one way or the other? You can feel when it is off. It is like adjusting a piano to get it in tune–to make it sound right.

 

The second influence is the way Japanese paintings and woodblock prints crop objects along the edge of the picture.

The edges of my prints are intentionally active. There are many small shapes created by cutting off objects at the edges of the pictures. This creates dynamism in the composition. It also tends to flatten the composition, making the space of the picture feel shallower–something which European artists (such as the Impressionists in the late 1800's) noticed when they first saw Japanese woodblock prints and were significantly impacted. This eventually led to the flatter-looking paintings of abstract art.

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I am always conscious of the balance between a flat arrangement of shapes and the depth of space in all my prints, but Bridge Over Irises combines the flat arrangement of shapes with less depth than usual. This, along with the downward angle of the camera, tips the picture toward the viewer, making the top feel quite close. So the picture looks fairly vertical–somewhat reminiscient of a Japanese hanging-scroll painting. And the man is framed by a zigzag pattern of shapes, cut off at the edges–like figures in interior spaces in Japanese woodblock prints. Which makes Bridge Over Irises the closest of all my prints to the Japanese aesthetic. Not that I set out to do that, but that is what the picture demanded. ​

 

The artist makes the picture, the picture talks back, and the artist needs to listen. And in the end, it is the picture that gets the last word–long after the artist, and the critic, are gone!