Japan

Paintings based on pictures taken during a 5-day trip to Japan in December 2018. This was my first foray east of ... Vienna (the farthest east I had been before!). My unsophisticated eye about everything asian/oriental led me to rush my impressions back to my friends and colleagues back west, to help me "read the sights" correctly. Was in for a serious dress down by one of those Japanophile friend who felt that I missed the gist of the everything Japanese. I have to say I came into the country with a bunch of preconceived ideas based on what we read in the west about Japan. The non-sophisticated traveler that I am, I purposely made no effort at relativizing what I was seeing to my Japanophile friends back home to make sure I got an unadorned rebuke of my western bias. And rebuke did I get.

In any event, the nicer one of my friends thought that the moods of these paintings reflected my own "orient" (North African) as opposed to the Japanese variety. Well, that sort of goes without saying ...

Pagodes at night

This is an imaginary scene, having failed to convey the mood of the "real" scenes shown in the next two paintings.

I was titillated by the shapes of the trees in the various monuments that I visited, and that is a combination of the "natural" characteristics of the trees, and of the "grooming" by those who tend to the trees in various temples.

Buddhist Temple

This temple is in Nara, the city where I stayed for 5 days for an academic conference. The temple looked differently from the other temples in Nara, and more specifically, the Kofukuji Temple (of which, the next painting). Daniel had his theory about what this temple is. It looked "modern" and includes "imported influences" because, according to Daniel, Japanese buildings are not very "detail oriented" (other artifacts are). This one makes extensive use of glass and various ornaments.

Kofukuji Five-Storied Pagoda

My sister loves cats, and keeps sending out pictures from a site called "viral kittens". I thought I would try my hand at painting a mother - kitten scene of two cats burning the midnight oil also in a full moon. Not talented enough to do anything more elaborate :-). Luckily, she liked it.