THE SONG OF KOUMI

The Exhibition comes to Salisbury

Young Gallery

Market Place 3, SPI IBL Salisbury, UK
Postponed due to Covid-19

For more information and to reserve works please contact

+44 (0) 7754 191 084 or mail@richardhoare.com

The Song of Koumi

an Exhibition by Richard Hoare

Koumi-machi Kougen Museum of Art, Japan

September 8th - November 4th 2018

www.richardhoare.com

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mail@richardhoare.com or

+44 (0) 7754 191 084

I arrived in Koumi in the season of Autumn mists on a September day in 2016. The landscape was brushed with a soft half light like a fine Japanese drawing. No mountains, and even the far shore of the Lake Matsubarako appeared only occasionally, like a shy person meeting a stranger for the first time. I stepped out with my work, feeling my way. There was no need for water to make those first works on paper, the lightest rain mist was always present to blend with the ink and watercolour.

When I returned for the first long period of work in the Autumn of 2017, I saw the mountains for the first time. Like a poem by Bashō, the mountains had been kept back the year before by cloud, just as the beautiful Lady is concealed by the grey silk screen. I went to the forest, the lake and the snow, when it came. I drank the Light in all its forms, even in the darkness the reflected Sun from the face of the Moon washed over Ogura San Mountain.

The work in this exhibition has been born out of this Gaze sustained through the cycle of Koumi’s seasons, revisiting the same viewpoints in all weathers.
The turning wheel of these days and nights of each year is like a great continuous Song sung through, and manifest in Nature. It is the Song of Immense Joy without beginning or end. I paint from the need to share this Song once heard, line by line, picture by picture.

In Koumi the Song is very clear and close. It seems right to do this. After all is done... How can The Song not sung be heard?
There is only Continuity, repetition is an illusion.
The star scatter of maple leaves against blue sky, are each as different as the stars they echo. We just assume they are the same when we look. To See is to affirm the Unity behind the multitude of variation of form, and to celebrate that the ordinary does not exist, it is only the extraordinary that we have not yet noticed. Painting is the journey from looking to Seeing, and this is my work.

To paint the Moment of Light with the knowledge that it is unique, and with the understanding that the fragrance of this witnessed Moment can penetrate a piece of work. The creation of these works are the stretching to touch this Essence that is beyond description.

All good journeys contain some revelation about oneself, or the place one visits or even an aspect of a companion traveler. Before I set off for Japan in 2017, a much revered Japanese friend told me of Ma 間 and an extraordinary thing happened as we talked. She was describing the encounter with this Essence that I already experienced and practiced in my work as a Painter. She showed me the Kanji, and within its composition I saw my Journey as a Painter...
This Kanji is made from two other separate words: Gateway and Sunlight entering through that opening.

Gateway 門 Sunlight 日 Ma 間

I have now spent seven complete months in Japan since 2016 up in the forest on the shoulder of Tengudake. Alone with the seasons and the sensation of the forest all around. I still use the rain in my work and even the cold helped to catch the Spirit of Winter as it froze the ink on the paper.

I now see that my steps here both within and outward are of Ma which can not be described in words but the tasting of its manifestation enhances understanding.

When I was beginning this path as a Painter I was welcomed by contact with the World of Icons. As is well known an Icon of worth is painted as an act of Prayer by the Nun or Monk focused completely on the spirit of the Saint being depicted. In a sense this prayerful action is one of the ways that the Monastic life in the West is close to the path of the Buddhist Monks of the East.

The completed Icon, often on Panel, is forever after respected and cared for as a living part of the Saint. This is illustrated by the accounts of the survivors of the recent conflicts in the Caucuses who would find singed icons still gleaming with colour and gold leaf, floating down rivers and streams. The villages higher up had been attacked and burnt, the desperate villagers had rescued the Icons from their burning Churches and placed them in the rivers so these treasured images could escape even if the faithful could not.

The Icon is a window through which the viewer passes from this world and perceives the realm beyond that knows no constriction of Time and Place. The viewer contacts the Spirit of the Saint, or more precisely the Quality that was special to that Saint, eg Mother Mary = Mercy and Source of Life. Although not a religious person, my time with Icons and journeys in orthodox countries had a profound effect on my early work. I was in no doubt that a two dimensional image made in a certain dedicated way could still be an opening between this World and the one ‘Just out of sight’ that I sense so strongly when in the Landscape.

間

This is the Kanji of Ma. Of course this is a precise distillation of an Icon or any painting made with a certain focused Intention.

Ma is Light moving through a doorway, a Space between the opening of a door, a means of passing from here to the beyond. It implies a movement and invitation to pass through.

It is a Remembering that the Sun and the Moon which reflects the Sun, is the Source of Life and in fact all the material of our Solar System was integrated in the place where the Sun exists today . Just as the great song ‘Woodstock’ by Joni Mitchell says ... “We are Star Dust”.

Ma is Patience, the space between a desire and the satisfaction of that desire . Ma is the hand outstretched in the Warmth of the Sun.
Ma is the Season between Winter and Summer, and each season in turn.
Ma is the gap between the beating of the wings of a butterfly.

Ma is the Distance between now and Basho’s life. His Light is in the words he left that bridges these centuries, and we are invited to move through the gate of meaning when we read his words.

Ma is No Space - No Time it is the spiral moving in all of us, held in the structure of our DNA and Breath, and it is here in Koumi, within the Song of Koumi, never ending always sounding, like the Great Bell of the temple.

Thank you to The Koumi-machi Kougen Museum of Art and Mr and Mrs Horiuchi for the warm welcome and the opportunity to make this work.

Richard Hoare, August 30th 2018