Japan Things

In an earlier posting I mentioned that some work in this new series will incorporate Japanese subject matter. The man walking with cats below has some of that, but here is the start of a direction I'd like to try in which the subject matter is less surreal and more purely Japan, or at least a nod toward some everyday objects that informed my experience of Japan. I don't have original photos for reference, only these drawings from life I recorded in my journal at the time (ca. 2002-2003). I'm hoping the paintings that follow will in some way capture something that could be called "contemporary", though at this point I'm not sure what form that will take. At the moment my goal is to avoid painterly realism and push for more creative use of color and graphic approaches.



The free-standing kerosene stove/space heater makes winter in Japan bearable. With the exception of the northern parts of the country, most homes and schools in Japan are not centrally heated so people rely on these stoves to heat rooms. This one is not as new and fancy as the ones people keep in their homes, but it's what we had in the high school classrooms where I taught. This image is evidence of where I spent much of my time between classes. The heat and mesmerizing red glow were in effect like a campfire on a cold night. Oh, and it's pretty handy for keeping tea water hot too.



The characters at the top read "Asagohan", which means breakfast in Japanese. I used be a heavy smoker and coffee drinker. During much of my twenties, that would be my "breakfast". On one particular morning I was out of real coffee. The house I lived in was in a rural part of Osaka and the only "store" out my door that didn't constitute a trip to get to was a cold drink vending machine that stood guard at the foot of the drive that led to the house. This is where I got the Georgia can coffee, not quite a substitute for the real stuff but I developed a taste for it anyway. The text "How many more years?..." is me trying to come to terms with the knowledge of the risks that would worsen over time if I didn't get control over bad habits. The answer is that it took 3 more years. I quit both cigarettes and coffee in 2005.