Letters of Urgent Longing
Everyone has within themselves a sense of longing. It manifests in many forms: for love, for a greater unity within oneself, for loved ones lost, for dreams unfulfilled, for acceptance, for forgiveness.
For reasons I cannot recall, I began a series of oil pastels that were eventually entitled Letters to my mother. I would hold in my feelings a particular characteristic of hers and I would simply draw. This effort is related to the 2018 exhibition: Palimsesto where writing and image combined, yet the ‘Letters’ were free from any literal expression, aiming simply to stay related to an inner impression of my late mother.
This latest collection draws from those previous endeavors. The script emerged from a deep, inexplicable sense of longing. It is a language without literal meaning, yet wishing to be known. Existing in the liminal space at the birth of written forms, it is the irrepressible need to find expression for the inner life and share it with others. In that effort, it joins an ancient endeavor.
At its source, it is a longing for being.
In offering these images, I wish to open a realm between abstract markings and the suggestion of written script. In their communion, I aim to evoke that urgent longing and bring it to life..
“The months and days are wayfarers of a hundred generations, and the years that come and go are also travelers. Those who float all their lives on a boat or reach their old age leading a horse by the bit make travel out of each day and inhabit travel. Many in the past also died while traveling. In which year it was I do not recall, but I, too, began to be lured by the wind like a fragmentary cloud and have since been unable to resist wanderlust, roaming out to the sea shores. Last fall, I swept aside old cobwebs in my dilapidated hut in Fukagawa, and soon the year came to a close; as spring began and haze rose in the sky, I long to walk beyond the Shirakawa Barrier and, possessed and deranged by the distracting deity and enticed by the guardian deity of the road, I was unable to concentrate on anything. In the end I mended the rips in my pants, replaced hat strings, and, the moment I gave a moxa treatment to my knee caps, I thought of the moon over Matsushima. I gave my living quarters to someone and moved into Sampū’s villa: In my grass hut the residents change: now a dolls’ house.”
In 1689, the revered Japanese poet, Matsuo Bashō, began a five-month journey visiting famous sites extolled by poets of the past. Nearing the end of his life, he felt impelled “to fathom the truth expressed by those with poetic sensibility.” His account of that trip was captured in his book, Narrow Road to the Interior. The text which laces through my drawings is Bashō’s opening paragraph and hokku. While making the images for this exhibition, his book was a companion to my own search. His poignant longing was clearly inspired, as was mine, by the sense of his own mortality.
All images were created with a combination of gauche, watercolor pencil, felt marker, pen and graphite on 140 lb. watercolor paper. They range in size from 9 x 12 to 14 x 20 inches