48 PILLARS 2020

February 29 - May 9, 2020

Exhibition Statement 48 Pillars was inspired by a chance encounter at Flax with a close-out sale of deep vertical panels, 48” x 12” x 1 5/8”. 24 local Bay Area artists will produce two pieces each on these identically sized panels that will exactly ring the gallery – 48 works total.

This is the fourth annual iteration of this exhibition at Arc Gallery. Along with our iconic FourSquared exhibition, this is essentially about "structural constraint".

In both exhibitions, the artists are unconstrained in subject matter except to the extent that works need to be a series; but they are constrained in format. One might expect that constraining format would constrain creativity. Our experience has been the opposite - creativity has been unleashed. The results have been visually stunning.

Michael Yochum, Curator

Catalog design: Michael Yochum Logo design: Priscilla Otani Arc Gallery © 2020

Participating Artists Bob Armstrong

Steven Liu

Kate Barrengos

Geralyn Marie Montano

Michael Chamberlain

Larry Morace

Rea Lynn de Guzman

Leslie Morgan

Natasha Dikareva

Stephen Namara

Marguerite Elliot

Sarah M. Newton

Matthew Frederick

Sandy Ostrau

Ester Hernandez

Rachel Sager

Shane Izykowski

Allison Snopek

Kathryn Kain

Samanta Tello

Michael Kerbow

Kay Weber

Clare Kuo

Fumiyo Yoshikawa

OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, February 29th, 7-9pm ARTIST TALK & CLOSING RECEPTION: Saturday, May 9th, 12-3pm

48 Pillars

February 29 - May 9, 2020

Bob Armstrong

I have lived in San Francisco for my entire life, and my carved paintings are deeply influenced by its natural beauty.

This engagement with beauty carries over into my travels, and is my inspiration in all of my work.

My art celebrates nature through hand carving on wood panels, because wood is an organic material that transports us directly into nature. In these panels, I explore three elements: pattern, texture, and color.

I begin with a careful drawing of a plant or flower, and then create an original pattern that relates to it. I place these in diptychs and triptychs, or in different sections in a single panel, that play off one another to balance positive and negative shapes. I subsequently carve, using hand tools, which gives my pieces a strong texture. The poet Pablo Neruda helped me understand the importance of texture: “Blossom and water and wheat kernel share one precious consistency: the sumptuous appeal of the tactile.�

Color plays an equally important role. With it, I reference the hues of the flowers, the seasons, and the rich tones ever present in nature. I employ a minimalistic, Japanese influenced aesthetic, engaging the eye with monochromatic color. I also use graphite, because I enjoy its metallic richness and optical qualities. Carving, design, painting and graphite combine into a meditation that guides viewers in a journey that calms and inspires. This is particularly important in these hectic times.

My concern with the environment is also central to my work. The importance of preserving and enhancing our natural environment is among the most pressing issues today. The world we live in needs protecting, and by emphasizing its beauty, I hope to call attention not only to what we have but what we might lose. website: http://www.bobarmstrongart.com/ email: strongarm_art@hotmail.com

Bob Armstrong

Summer - Bottle Rocket Plant, Hope, AK Fall – Branch and Leaves acrylic and graphite on hand-carved wood panel 12" x 48" panels $1600 each panel; $2900 diptych

Kate Barrengos A simple change in perspective inspired me to paint a series of aerial landscapes.

I grew up in Nebraska, surrounded by endless, orderly fields. The land is flat and relentlessly unremarkable. That impression changed immediately when I saw satellite images online. From above the terrain is is a spectacle of color, pattern, and infinite complexity — a gorgeous, geometric abstraction. For the past five years now, I’ve been painting aerial landscapes of both farmland and cities. Great Divide, an acrylic on panel diptych, is based on a satellite image of the continental divide in Wyoming — the point where our country splits in two. Water flows east toward the Atlantic Ocean, or west to the Pacific. It’s a dramatic, physical example of how our country is divided under one sky.

website: http://www.katebarrengos.com/ email: kate@katebarrengos.com

Kate Barrengos

Great Divide acrylic on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $4000 diptych

Michael Chamberlain

I’m inspired by light and structure.

Bridges and trees are among my favorite subjects.

I often find it challenging to convey the height of these objects when painting on a square or rectangular canvas. This show motivated me to experiment with subjects that could really benefit from the tall, narrow format.

Because I’m equally attracted to natural and man-made structures, I decided to include one of each, both illuminated by brilliant California sunlight.

website: https://www.chamberlainpaintings.com/ email: chamberlainpaintings@gmail.com

Golden Gate

Michael Chamberlain

Cypress

oil on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $3000 each panel; $5500 diptych

Rea Lynn de Guzman

I have moved repeatedly within my native and adoptive country since childhood. These migrations created not only geographic shifts, but also an intricate familial and personal disconnect interposed with cultural fusion and perplexity. My work explores psychological and socio-political themes surrounding liminal identity tempered by my experience as a Filipina immigrant living in the United States. I examine oxymoronic concepts of assimilation and repudiation, reductive and additive, permanence and temporality, and the complicit relationship between colonizer and colonized. My current work navigates through the colonial history of the piña fiber in the Philippines and its relationship with the idea of Maria Clara — the Maria Clara-esque ideals of beauty and status, accompanied by stereotypes of chastity, demureness, light skin, passivity, and subordination. My work presents and challenges the unbalanced power structure resulting from the inferiorization of native ideals by the colonizer, and its lasting impression of colonial mentality.

Artist Biography: Rea Lynn de Guzman is a San Francisco-based interdisciplinary artist working in painting, print media, and sculpture. Born in Manila, Philippines, she immigrated to the United States at age 14. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited work in the US, and internationally in Australia, India, and the Philippines. She was Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture Visual Arts Featured Artist in 2017. In 2019, she curated "Wander Woman," a traveling group show series featuring Bay Area-based, immigrant, women artists of color. She has been featured in the Asian Journal Magazine, Hella Pinay, KQED Arts, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. website: http://www.readeguzman.com/ email: realynn.deguzman@gmail.com

Streaks

Rea Lynn de Guzman

Splash

acrylic and image transfer on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $2000 each panel ; $3800 diptych

Natasha Dikareva

San Francisco is a city where everyone discovers something: self-realization, wisdom, opportunity.

I love to connect to the natural elements of the Bay Area, letting the ocean, eucalyptus, sun, rain, and other living creatures rejuvenate me. Daily excursions in the outdoors inspire contemplation of the primordial and eternal, longer timelines of existence within which the world myths are rooted.

In addition to the natural elements, my influences range from ancient Greek mythology to Eastern philosophies of spiritual transformation. In the studio, I travel between the physical present and the imaginative future, bringing dreams down to earth, shaping unfamiliar creatures to life, creating worlds in which the fantastic and the familiar coexist.

Through the back door of the subconscious, I find new paths around the mundane. I offer a meditative moment, a glimpse of an unseen world, and a playful recombination of symbols new and old.

In this diptych: effortlessly riding the waves she holds a pearl in one hand. With the other, she guides her bird guardians to protect the bay, leading boats safely into harbors.

website: http://dikarevart.com/ email: natasha@dikarevart.com

I Found My Pearl in San Francisco

Natasha Dikareva

Guardians of the Bay

stoneware, stains, glazes, china painting 12" x 48" panels SOLD

Marguerite Elliot

The art I create today has a direct connection to my years growing up on a small farm in rural Virginia. I feel a deep affinity with nature and the natural cycle of life. I spent many hours walking along stream banks, communing with nature.

Concerned with the current environmental destruction, loss of species, and irrevocable environmental changes taking place all over the world, my work functions as both a reliquary and a shrine, to what has been or soon may be lost. My steel sculptures speak to the transitory and fragile nature of life.

For this exhibition, I fabricated the panels, Falling Leaves I and II, out of 16 gauge steel. I then cut deep gashes in the steel symbolic of the way we are destroying our precious environment. I individually cut leaves from delicate gold leaf and floated them downward amidst deep gashes in the steel.

As a sculptor currently working in the San Francisco Bay Area, I have focused on feminist, anti-nuclear, social justice, and environmental issues. My current art includes small and large scale welded and mixed media sculpture. Recently, my larger environmental sculptures have been placed in sculpture parks in the United States and Europe.

website: www.margueriteelliot.com/ email: marguerite.elliot@gmail.com

Marguerite Elliot

Falling Leaves I & II gold leaf on steel panel 12" x 48" panels $2500 each panel; $4500 diptych

Matthew Frederick

Matthew Frederick presents an unconventional and amusing spin on the genre of still life painting by capturing the whimsical shadows and shapes cast from ordinary objects. Often inspired by common Icons, his style is characterized by the careful balance of structure, color, lighting and mood. His compositions are rendered with a resplendent color palette of generous applications of paint and undulating brushwork, lending to a compelling emulation of the patterns and sensations inherent in nature.

“My intention is to make dynamic imitations, a déjà vu for the mind that will encourage viewers to examine their surroundings with a fresh perspective. I present nature and structure with a delightful whimsy that reminds the public to turn their head and look again next time they pass something familiar that has lost its allure.”

Emboldened with lively energy, Frederick’s collection of striking still lifes' are executed in a truly distinctive style, resulting in visual imprints of the physical world that draw attention to its most striking features.

website: https://www.mjfrederickart.com/ email: mfrederick@me.com

Matthew Frederick

Beetles Column I & II oil on wood panel 12" x 48" panels SOLD

Ester Hernandez

This diptych painting expresses my deep love and concern for our beautifully magnificent but fragile Earth Mother. Juxtaposed is an image of a Spirit Mother who symbolizes ancestral love and wisdom for us to find inspiration and strength to meet the challenges of global warming and the social/political issues of the day. Straddling the worlds between life and death, it is my attempt to remind us that we are just passing by and that we are made of the same materials as the sun, moon and stars. We have only one Earth Mother and she belongs to all of us and the seven generations to come.

website: http://www.esterhernandez.com/ email: esterhernandezart@gmail.com

Ester Hernandez

Nuestras Madres / Our Mothers acrylic on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $6000 diptych

Shane Izykowski

My mission is to depict the depth of the human experience through the exploration of visceral imagery, honest emotion and the common threads that tie us all together. My artwork revolves around the idea of healing, despite emotional turmoil, trauma and grief. I paint people I know, places I've explored and animals that have crossed my path.

The concept for "The Sound of Surrender" was done in collaboration with the model, Lilly Shi. Through a series of deeply personal interviews, key elements of Lilly's identity revealed what the artwork was to speak about. The poem on the artwork was written

by Lilly to further contextualize the overall message.

website: http://www.shaneizykowski.com/ email: shaneizykowski@gmail.com

Shane Izykowski

The Sound of Surrender oil on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $4250 diptych

Kathryn Kain

Drawing and painting the seasonal continuity of trees and flora from my environment is a joy and a meditation that grounds my practice. Each stem, fruit or branch becomes an intricate puzzle and a symbolic form of life and change. The deep mythical and seasonal associations of fruits inspire my work.

Hunting and gathering of natural materials is an essential part my work. These treasure troves of botanica are a playground for me. Branches, fruits and cuttings often crowd my studio. I work to capture their forms from life as they ripen and eventually fade.

website: http://www.kathrynkain.com/ email: kk@cailech.com

Early Summer

Kathryn Kain

Late Summer

oil on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $2600 each panel; $4200 diptych

Michael Kerbow

My art explores how we engage with our surroundings, and the possible consequences our actions have upon the world around us. I seek to question the rationale of our choices, and attempt to reveal the dichotomy that may exist between what we desire and what we manifest. Recently my work has focused upon the dynamics underlying modern society, and the future aftermath of our present actions. I examine themes such as hyper-consumerism and ecology, and create allegories of our collective pursuits.

Michael Kerbow is a San Francisco-based artist who works in a variety of media including painting, drawing, assemblage, and digitally manipulated photography. He was born in North Carolina and received an MFA from Pratt Institute in New York, before moving to the Bay Area in 1993. Kerbow's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has appeared in multiple publications. He has twice been nominated for SFMOMA’s prestigious SECA award. His work is currently in a traveling museum exhibition called "Environmental Impact II", which is an environmental-themed show touring a number of museums across the country.

website: http://michaelkerbow.com/ email: mk@michaelkerbow.com

Michael Kerbow

Interzone oil on canvas 12" x 48" panels $4500 diptych

Clare Kuo My artwork is influenced by having grown up in the East. Much of my work as a college student was inspired by aboriginal dress and crafts. While my style has evolved, my color palette is still largely influenced by humble aboriginal traditions. For example, my palette consists primarily of bold primary colors, I use simple geometrical shapes and I leave ample open space in each painting. I may also use Sumi ink on rice paper or apply it directly to my paintings to balance out the color and add complexity.

Fifteen years of graphic design experience in academia and industry have strongly influenced my creative process and the final composition of each piece. I start each painting by sketching graphical elements on paper and using the sketch as an inspiration. While the final piece may not resemble the initial sketch, balance, harmony and structure are all based on the fundamentals of graphic design.

My latest series, Tap, has been inspired, in part, by my passion for tap dance. My home art studio doubles as dance studio where my children and I practice tap dance. We’ve been taking classes for a couple of years and I've become fascinated with the form. If I am ever stuck with a piece or just need a break, I practice tap for a while and come back with a clear mind. I have incorporated typeface in my tap series as it reminds me of tapping sounds from old typewriters.

As a graphic designer and artist that loves old typewriters and tap dance, Tap describes the sounds coming from my studio and my heart.

website: https://www.clarekuo.com/ email: clare@clarekuo.com

Clare Kuo

Tap 24 & 25 mixed media on wood panel 12" x 48" panels SOLD

Steven Liu

Steven Liu’s (b. 1989) tireless physical energy is expressed in his line - it, too, cannot be contained.

It moves and jumps, doubles back, extends out, and then returns in long jittering loops, stopping occasionally to take note of a particular aspect before continuing on its vigorous way.

Liu’s attention to detail and its willful disruption elevate the humble marker (his preferred medium) to heights normally reserved for the finest materials. In his hands, a few markers are as expressive as a palette full of oil paints.

Since joining the Creativity Explored Studio in 2011, Liu has been unstoppable and is a fast learner, willing to try new things, and experiment with new surfaces and varying sizes of work. He enjoys working in series, studying different subjects like dancers, bikers, and Hindu motifs.

website: https://www.creativityexplored.org/artists/steven-liu email: info@creativityexplored.org

Steven Liu

After Modigliani 1 & 2 acrylic on wood panel 12" x 48" panels SOLD

Geralyn Marie Montano

She Wolf Wisdom was inspired by the incredible traits of the female wolf. While decisions for the pack are made by both male and female, it is the female wolves who are responsible for making important decisions for the pack, such as where to dig the den and where and when to hunt. These decisions are made by the alpha female. Wolves provide us examples of how to value each member, of a community, young, old, male and female.

We can look to the wolves to find an example of balance in gender equality.

Creating this work, I experimented with the rorschach technique lending to a psychological component. The concept comes to fruition with sketching and expressive painting. Continuing my process, I am reminded of my own untamed powers in the image of the mirrored wolves.

This gives me the tenacity to advocate for a more egalitarian community as a feminist artist.

website: http://www.gerimontano.com/ email: gmgeriberry24@gmail.com

Geralyn Marie Montano

She Wolf Wisdom acrylic on wood panel 12" x 48" panels SOLD

Larry Morace

I grew up in a flat, small-town environment and my initial encounters with Chicago and New York City were beyond thrilling. Living in San Francisco has been a special gift. The vertical monumentality of our city has excited me since I arrived years ago.

One particular memory‌when the Loma Prieta earthquake temporarily took out power to downtown San Francisco (this dates me, I know!)

I had just returned from one of my stays at Yosemite Valley. Seeing these tall buildings with their narrow streets in natural light only, it was striking how similar they felt to the towering granite walls and canyons I had just witnessed. I saw them both as truly majestic, national parks.

It seems the thrill of the vertical cities and western canyon landscapes will always exert their pull over me.

website: https://www.larrymorace.com/ email: larrymorace@sbcglobal.net

Larry Morace

City Canyon 13 oil on canvas on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $3800 diptych

Leslie Morgan

Almost all of my art has to do with water! It is my passion, my joy and my concern. My art comes from memories of summers spent leaping and diving, doing cannonballs and back flips, participating in breath holding contests and looking up through chlorine filtered sunlight daydreaming. In water, on a universal level, we become weightless, buoyant and free both in mind and body. I never want to lose these wonderful feelings that the oceans provides us with. I attempt to impart and share these feelings visually through my art.

website: http://www.lesliemorganart.com/ email: dockles@comcast.net

Leslie Morgan

Deep Sea Dreaming 1 & 2 acrylic, ink and resin on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $1800 each panel; $3000 diptych

Stephen Namara My painting practice is process driven , where the outcome is never finite or anticipated. It is not the raw material that counts, but what you do with it.

This diptych, Hostage, sets a scene; tells a story, perhaps an elegy; and is an attempt to explore our relationship to other cohabitants on this planet. Scientists have used the term “Anthroposcene” to describe an ecological turning point where the impact of human behavior has significantly and permanently affected our planet, contributing to drastic changes. We build, produce and consume with little or no regard to the impact it has on the environment. It is the nature of nature to adapt and evolve in order to survive, and we are forcing other species to deal with compromised, damaged or destroyed ecosystems.

In order to remove the work from the drama of “trompe l’oeil”, I have played with the paint surfaces and experimented with mediums, giving it a looseness and accidental quality while retaining the illustrated reference. Coincidentally, the dripping paint surfaces read as stills in a narrative and leave the viewer with the feeling that something is about to happen or just happened.

Some years ago, as a kind of affirmation, I wrote a quote from Albert Camus on my studio wall: “It is by a continual effort that I can create… It is how I despair and how I cure myself of despair.”

website: https://www.stephennamara.com/ email: stephen@stephennamara.com

Stephen Namara

Hostage oil, enamel, acrylic, canvas on wood panel 12" x 48" panels SOLD

Sarah M. Newton

For the last few years I have been walking sections of the San Francisco Bay shoreline, following the map of the SF bay trail’s as-yet incomplete segments; this planned 500-mile path has been under construction for 30 years but still exists only in discontinuous pieces. I have been drawing the landscapes I find at endpoints where the trail hits the zones of construction, industry, and restricted areas which prevent the sections from being connected. Along with landscape drawings on paper, larger drawings like these on yupo focus on small details from the environment, modest built barriers found at the tideline.

Visiting the broken lines on the map takes me to places outside of public use, unimproved lands that still contain the remnants of the maritime and military past of the shoreline, areas of infrastructure and industry that are overlooked. The landscape is transitional, not only due to the Bay Area’s appetite for developable land, but also as a result of gradual land subsidence and rising sea level.

Maps can tell one story of the future of the shoreline, but there is another understanding to be found in intimate familiarity with the changing margin of the land and the water that surrounds us. The culverts, revetments, seawalls, and pipelines in these drawings are worn and overgrown, partially submerged, and some may have been originally created to protect things which no longer exist. These little things are evidence of attempts to control the boundary between water and land in a way that once seemed straightforward but may soon no longer be adequate. website: https://sarahmnewton.carbonmade.com/ email: sarah@sarahmnewton.com

Sarah M. Newton

Revetment Culvert India ink on yupo mounted on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $2000 each panel; $3600 diptych

Sandy Ostrau In my work, and in these two panels, I aim to portray the connection between landscape and people. The scenes are abstracted and detail is eliminated to allow viewers to create their own stories and interpretations of what is going on in the painting. I use form, value and texture to create movement and suggest, but not dictate, a mood or emotion. In addition, I think a lot about the elements of design when creating a scene. My figures are intentionally ambiguous, allowing them to become elemental forms along with the other constituents of the landscape to create a unified whole.

website: http://www.sandyostrau.com/ email: artist@sandyostrau.com

Beach Walk Duo

Sandy Ostrau

Beach Walk Solo

oil on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $2200 each panel; $3600 diptych

Rachel Sager That which divides, protects, defines and distinguishes, camouflages and distorts, the hide, and all of its intricacies and markings, creates a visual field of lustrous, palpable semblance, ordinary and yet illusive in nature.

Rachel Sager is an oil painter living and working in Oakland, California. She received a BFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia after studying at Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, Italy. Her work has been featured in many Internationally juried shows including Aqua International Art Fair in Miami, FL; Open and Crocker-Kingsley California Biennial; in addition to the Emmy Award-winning documentary, Sketching the Silk Road.

website: https://www.rachelsager.com/ email: rachel_sager@sbcglobal.net

Dazzle

Rachel Sager

It Feels Like This to Me

oil on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $2100 each panel; $4000 diptych

Allison Snopek

Striking forms, masked emotions, organic beauty, and eerie light are the visual motifs that have inspired my work over the past several years. For this Ouroboros series, I was struck by the ancient symbol that depicts a serpent eating its own tail. The image is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It appears in various historical representations and is recognized by a variety of cultures across the world. A double ouroboros (two creatures swallowing one a nother) can signify volatility or the balance of the upper and lower natures.

Not only does the Ouroboros create a mesmerizing visual experience, but it evokes a universal recognition of our human existence.

We have the ability to renew and reinvent ourselves, while at the same time, we have the tendency to become stuck in self-destructive cycles. As I painted this diptych, employing my usual technique of repetitively applying thin layers of color, I enjoyed pondering these notions as they are embedded in humanity, society, self-actualization, and art.

website: http://www.allisonsnopek.com/ email: allison.snopek@gmail.com

Allison Snopek

Alizarin Emerald oil on cavas mounted on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $1600 each panel; $2700 diptych

Samanta Tello

I feel inspired by the relationship between harmony and contrast – In my work, I am interested in showing how contrasting elements highlight the opposing qualities in one another and bring appreciation of their specific attributes. I use simple, bold contrasts of positive and negative space, light and shadow, color, texture, patterns, and contrasting materials like wood and metal leaf. I often let the wood grain show through, using wood stains and integrating pyrography (drawing with a heated metallic point.)

My artistic focus and inspiration bring attention to women’s and girls’ issues. My daughters bring me constant motivation and enthusiasm to keep doing my work and advocate for them, for us.

website: http://www.samantatello.com/ email: samantatello@gmail.com

Samanta Tello

The Golden Gift of True Sisterhood pyrography, gold and silver leaf, stains and acrylic on wood panel 12" x 48" panels SOLD

Kay Weber

I always loved to work with paper. Cutting paper is my passion. About two decades ago, I started out creating small bookmarks, which quickly evolved into larger work. Now I like to work with any kind of paper, printed, painted or even plain.

In my collages, I layer by texture and color as it corresponds with the theme and image I create.

With my scissor drawings, I am interweaving the more traditional cutting techniques into a new appearance and design. Most of the time these images are inspired by mythological themes and multi-cultural stories of folk tradition.

Our destructive impact on the environment and diminishing believes in honoring nature is calling for protection. While Amazonia, the land of trees and water, is still burning, we should ask nature spirits for help, our ancient versions of superheroes, who might appear bruised and battled, but still can amplify their powers to save us all. In ancient days nature spirits populated our world and our minds. My Baltic-Slavic cultural heritage offers many stories and images of deities, spirits, and fairies. They were present everywhere. Tree and water spirits often were helpful, some times mischievous. Together we could evoke healing ourselves and nature. My collages are representing my hopes, prayers, and meditations to give us the power of reflection and healing.

Thetis - Water Spirit: A female figure from Greek mythology, a sea nymph, a goddess of water, or one of the 50 Nereids, daughters of the ancient sea god Nereus.

Silvanus - Tree Spirit: A male, Roman deity protector of the forest. He especially presided over plantations and delighted in trees growing wild.

website: http://www.kayweberartstudio.com/ email: kayweberartstudio@icloud.com

Silvanus - Tree Spirit

Kay Weber

Thetis - Water Spirit

mixed media cut paper collage on wood panel 12" x 48" panels $2000 each panel; $3600 diptych

Fumiyo Yoshikawa Recently I found some old photos of my cats that I used to live with in Japan, evoking memories of long-ago days. I realize how much the world has changed. It is more convenient, but what have we sacrificed - a healthy environment, clean water and air, safe and healthy foods, wild animals and plants in nature? The list is long.

In my Japanese brush painting I have been using bamboo brushes, sumi-ink and pigments made of minerals and organic materials for nearly four decades. I am grateful that I have kept this spiritual way of painting in this fastchanging world. Although this method requires continuous training and the processes are time consuming, they provide a type of meditation to heal my soul.

This diptych of cats is inspired by waka (Japanese poems) from an old anthology, Kokinshu, that echo my thoughts about the world. I added a saying: warau kado niwa fuku kitaru (happiness comes to people who smile) to each poem for a positive mind. The calligraphy was practiced until I could draw it naturally and freely. Only then did I started thinking about how to place the elements, the cats and poems, in the diptych. I could have placed more cats, but I found a cat in each piece can tell more and creates a good relationship with the calligraphy and the empty spaces.

Because this type of painting doesn’t allow retouches, I made lots of drafts before executing a final work. After choosing the best draft among them, I drew the calligraphy and the outlines of cats.

Then, I painted with several layers of thin sumi-ink and added a small amount of colors, gold powder, and the seals. Before gluing the works on the panels, I mounted the works on another paper to flatten and strengthen them and to add some interesting texture. I am pleased with the result. I hope my cats make viewers smile. website: http://www.fumiyo-y.com/ email: art@fumiyo-y.com

Between Dreams

It Knows

ink, mineral pigments, and gold on Xuan paper mounted on Unryu paper on wood panel 12" x 48" panels SOLD (left panel) $2200 (right panel) Fumiyo Yoshikawa

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