At our art museum last evening, Tousui Tanaka an internationally acclaimed Japanese sumi-e (black ink painting) and calligraphy artist gave a wonderful lecture and demonstration. She does traditional and contemporary work.
This picture shows her demonstrating her painting technique on paper with black ink and her natural bristle brushes.
She demonstrated 5 different styles of Japanese calligraphy, all of the above papers spell "moon". Some are very ancient styles.
With her contemporary painting she did different kimonos while here in Michigan at Ox-Bow Summer school of art as an artist in residence. This first sleeve has a beautiful poem written on it (of course, I can't remember the words).
The rest of the kimono is a drawing of bamboo, but when she explained all the meaning it was so much more and beautiful.
This kimono has another poem written on the sleeve and also a branch with plum blossoms. Another element she worked with is the gold leafing.
This final kimono design was inspired by the wisteria vines growing around the school.
1 comment:
Her work is beautiful! My Granddaughter, Jennifer would love to see something like this. She has a fascination with Japan and anything associated with it. She loves the Mangas, the backwards books......I even got her language discs for her computer. She'll probably visit there one day!
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