Playing in the Camellia

It’s never plan or forethought that brings me back every few months to the writing and painting of Tomihiro Hoshino. As a writer and artist he hasn’t published an especially large canon, but then how many living artists have an entire museum dedicated to their work? After a horrible paralyzing accident while practicing gymnastics at the age of twenty-four, Hoshino learned over the next few years how to work with a paintbrush held in his mouth to produce poems and pictures. The former physical education teacher spent nine years in the hospital before being able to go home. The first exhibition of his poems and flower paintings came in 1982, a touring exhibition that enthralled over one million visitors in its first months.

Hoshino’s style and simply stated expressions of doubt, awakening, wonder and love are characteristics that his mostly Japanese audience finds familiar and heartfelt. His perspective is thoroughly Japanese in its sentiment and manner of expression, but at the same time a perspective and style that have enchanted non-Japanese for long years. His work sounds a chord as precisely the kind of poetic expression that first attracted me to Japan. Totally without qualification or apology, one recognizes the journey this man traveled in reaching the day finally when life returned to him through the medium of brush, ink and paint. Hoshino’s work would be outstanding had it been done with hands, arms and fingers, but we are startled to discover that while arms, hands and fingers are unmoving, it is art achieved without that advantage. Obviously, the heart is able to compensate where limbs fail.

Now sixty-six, Tomihiro Hoshino continues to write, paint, publish and exhibit his art. He lives in Gunma Prefecture northwest of Tokyo with his wife of many years. His work is a glowing example of human endeavor in the face of almost insuperable hardship. The pictures above all come from the book, Road of the Tinkling Bell, published in 1986.

For those interested in other examples of Hoshino’s work…

Thorn Flower

Changing Voices

Munching on Flowers

More of Kawamura

Found a loose wire on a painting in the living room, so I took it down for repair. But as it happened, the time between taking it off the wall and tightening the loose wire got extended somehow, and for much of the day the painting lay across a table. That being a different perspective of looking at the piece, I stopped several times to look again at the painting.

The artist is one I’ve mentioned before, the still young Japanese painter, Chinami Kawamura, who I consider a bright light for the future of Japanese painting. There is a large amount of Western influence and style in Kawamura’s painting, but she is completely faithful to Japanese, or at least Asian subjects. Much of her work is in acrylic, and I can’t even recall seeing anything done in oil, watercolor or pastel. I have a very large pencil drawing of two nude figures, and I have seen other of the artist’s work in pencil. Her skill in that medium is equal to what she does in acrylic.

The painting here is in acrylic, measures 23 inches by 19 inches, and is done on board. The large brown, almost round area is a dish or plate, and the viewer looks down from a bird’s eye view into the plate, at an arrangement of three vegetables common to Japanese homes and restaurants: eggplant, lotus root and green chili-like peppers. The small daubs of greenish-yellow and white below are wasabi mustard and grated white radish. Turning to a Western technique, the artist spread an English language newspaper across her ‘table’ and created a collage effect with gesso. This gives the appearance of dish and vegetables laying on a newspaper covered table. For highlights on the eggplant and green peppers she used silver leaf.

I am forever happy that I stumbled upon an exhibit of Ms Kawamura’s work in a small Tokyo gallery. I bought one painting at that show, and in the next two years bought other paintings and drawings directly from the artist. Of course, I could be wrong in my appraisal, but I have great faith that one day Chinami Kawamura will be a familiar name among Japanese painters.