Oil painting is a very sensual experience. Beyond the ideas and concepts of how to fill the empty space of ‘canvas’ – there is the full sensory process of painting. The paints texture, it’s smell, the laying out of the palette of colors and mixing them with the mediums, the contact of brush with paint and paint to canvas, and then knowing when the painting is complete. This whole process is translated to the viewer – somehow, felt, perceived, sensed, known.
In the winter of 1989, I did my first oil painting, and titled it “Watashi no Inouchi” (translates as ‘My Life’). The word Inouchi means more than Life – it is life with the awareness of death, informing us in how to live fully, in the moment, here and now. It is the image above, and it has a wonderful story of how I first came to painting in oils.
I had a showing in an art gallery in Venice, California. It was the shows reception and It was there that I met this Latino man with the soulful eyes, named Alberto. He approached me and introduced himself as a fashion photographer – He did high fashion photography and was interested in my art. He wanted me to paint his models faces like the figures in my paintings – the paintings were Acrylic and Airbrushed images of Japanese theater – Kabuki combined with Geisha ( I was making the connection between the two worlds of artistic expression ). He was disillusioned with the fashion world and wanted to create his own photographic images. After talking awhile he asked me to be one of his models. I had modeled before for fashion shows and photo shoots, so I was open to this, but I wanted to make sure he was legitimate so I challenged him by saying – the only way I am to be photographed is with my sword – I am a highly trained martial artist and one of my expressions is ‘Iaido’ – a Japanese sword form. He was pleased by this, and so I said yes.
Together we visited several of his fashion designer friends, picking out whimsical and fantastic dresses and costumes. The location of the shoot was the Malibu Pier. He lived at the end of the pier in a studio space overlooking the ocean. I brought my make-up, kimonos and my sword.
It was wild, executing my trained traditional sword movements in these high fashioned outfits, not to mention the high, high heels. Then it was time to wear my own kimonos, more traditional, and more of a match for the sword. Alberto then asked me to use the sword in some way I never explored before, forgetting all traditional forms and my relationships to them.
Wow. I immediately cradled the sword like a baby, and placed its sharp blade near my ear, as if listening to what it was saying to me. It was an extraordinarily beautiful moment.
This experience transformed me in so many ways that I decided to continue to stretch myself and paint this very image in a medium I had never explored before – oils !
The mind of the painter should be like a mirror which is filled with as many images as there are things placed before him/her. Leonardo da Vinci
People can’t live with change if there is not a changeless core inside of them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about, and what you value. Stephen Covey
