Keiko Sono: Playing with Lead

Painting 2/Suika, Lichen and Green Soap

Sun, 02 May 2004 03:14:01 GMT

Hideout #11, 8.12.2002 (Suika)
Hideout #12, 8.12.2002 (lichen and virginia creeper)
Hideout #9, 8.12.2002 (green soap) These were all painted in one late afternoon. One of those perfect moments when I didn't have to do anything. The temperature, light, air, everything was perfect. First came the soap, then Suika, then the lichen--every stroke, every wash just fell in place. By the time I finished it, the night had descended on us like a warm, moist veil. We sat outside in the dark for a long time. I always liked the nape of Suika's neck. Especially around this time, when she was only four. Her neck was short and wrinkly in the front, but from the back it already looked slender and girl-like, with the depression in the center quite prominent. It looked too fragile to support her firm, round head. Perfectly happy moments are always shadowed with a hint of foreboding. This is intensified with a birth of a child. I had lost my father the year before, two months before 9 /11. It seemed I had experienced all I needed to appreciate the moment, not to take anything for granted. Now looking back, it was just the beginning. It is increasingly becoming difficult to find the bliss...

Painting 1 (Rudy, Grass and Fallen Leaves)

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 16:24:00 GMT

Walkabout #13, 9.23.2002 (Rudy)
Walkabout #16, 9.24.2002 (Rudy Foreshortened)
Walkabout #15, 9.24.2002
Walkabout #14, 9.24.2002 Here is the first installment of my paintings. I'll start small and intimate. These were painted in the fall of 2002. That summer I asked a local horse farm owner if I could paint on his farm. He has beautiful 50 plus acres of open land, with a horse track and a pond flanked by willows and birches. It is situated by a public rail road walking trail, but once you step inside the gate it feels very private (although the owner lets anyone come in to walk around the track). It seemed like a perfect place to paint at first, but I soon found out that painting outdoors especially in open space like this farm was not as bucolic and peaceful as I had imagined. The sun mercilessly beats down on you. The wind flattens the easel and throws the freshly painted canvas on the ground, face down. The cumulus turns into a dark rain cloud in front of your eyes, and you're racing with thunder and rain to gather everything to take cover(no, not under locust trees which farmers used to plant as lightening poles). That summer, especially, was a hot one. I painted in the 110 degrees weather (in the sun) a few times, lasting about 20 minutes each session. But these adverse conditions really helped me loosen up. In the end I had paintings that were half finished, smeared, scratched, sprinkled with dirt, hurried and abbreviated. It was exactly what I needed in order to break out of the hard shell I had created for myself while grinding out in a cutthroat contemporary art market for a few years. But you wouldn't know from these little sketches that I was painting in such a wonderful open space. After all, I could paint my dog and a bit of grass and dirt and fallen leaves anywhere, right? Yes and no. Painting, slowly has been revealed to me, is not so much about conveying certain ideas, depicting visual scenes, or exploring formal aesthetic issues such as shape and color, as about being in a certain state of mind--dare I call it bliss--and, concocting from mixtures of pigments and oil to create a tiny universe, which, in turn, induces that similar bliss for those who come in contact with it. So the farm was a perfect place for me to find that bliss. My dog Rudy was always with me, always sleeping (as you can see) at my feet. He blended in perfectly among the fall leaves and deep green of tough farm weeds. Now, two years later, the farm is on the market, its owner moving further north, and Rudy is blind and deaf. But he still sleeps at my feet. And I'm still painting.

Unison Invite

Mon, 12 Apr 2004 06:54:15 GMT

March 13, 2004 This is the invite I designed for the two-person show I am in with my friend, Gail Gregg. I've been so into design since I picked up a copy of Non-designer's Design Book by Rogin Williams. Since then, I've read four other books by her and am waiting for another one. Learning about design was my huge missing piece. There is something really powerful and magical about using simple visual codes to enhance communication skills by ten-fold. And "getting" it was like learning to ride a bicycle. Her book made me see, practically over night, the order within what seemed to be a totally random, mysterious world. It is like one-part doing a puzzle, one-part changing Barbie's clothes, and one part accounting. What a great counter weight to balance the intensity of painting! As in design, CONTRAST is vital in life...especially that of an artist. (As I committ one of the worst sins according to RW - using all caps.)

Gregg and Sono at Unison

Mon, 12 Apr 2004 03:37:43 GMT

Thank you all to those who came to our opening. It was a beautiful day, and I really appreciate your sharing the gorgeous afternoon with us. It was truly a positive and valuable experience for me and I think for Gail as well to put this show together. Our main goal was to break out of the superficial categorization and to focus on the visual, textural, and perhaps even spiritual elements of our works, which are what painting is all about. Gail and I both work in styles that seem to be, at first, strongly associated with established genres - "abstract" and "landscape" - but I feel that our works, as with many other artists' perhaps, are more deeply appreciated when freed from such genres. Unfortunately such contextualization is not always possible, but our show was our take on such a challenge. Many of you seemed to agree with us, but I would love to hear all comments, positive and negative. By the way, the images are of the installation process. I am learning to use this blog application as I write each entry, so there are going to be lots of going back and forth in the chronological order in addition to technical difficulties. I'll get it sometime - thanks for being patient with me.