The paintings presented herein were created over the last 20 years, influenced by Japanese traditional aesthetics, which taught me the lesson of yojo, or resonance, the expressive power of simplicity, suggestion and nuance in poetic expression. My images were radically reduced, with shape and color the bases of evocation. In addition I became entranced with a very different aesthetic, that of Yugen, which derives from Noh, which is Zen drama. This traditional theatre expresses the interaction between the externals of appearance and the dark, hidden, mysterious inner nature of the self, especially woman, who is seen as unknowable through rational processes, glimpsed only through the artistic experience. This concept is the core of my work since I returned to California, after extensive travel in Europe, Asia and Latin America. As I moved to the modern metropolis, the complexity of the environment provoked the need to reveal the self through complex imagery. My position as Professor of Art History, with a specialty in Japanese Art at the California State Universities was the basis of my profound interest in the aesthetics of Asia.
The core of Yugen is a set of aesthetic concepts, beginning with the word hana, meaning flower or blossom, which refers to external beauty visually perceived. It is that which attracts. It came to mean elegance or grace, such as that expressed by the aristocrat with his regal bearing. But it evolved to mean lingering charm or suggestiveness, and was considered the ideal of beauty for classical poetry called Waka, the 31 syllable form written by the courtier. It indicated a subtle, haunting beauty in the heart, a beauty difficult to know directly. Only the indirect means of art could reveal its essence. Later the concept of hana was refined to become sabi, the quiet, rustic beauty embodied in the spare, simple tea house, wherein the ritual of the Zen tea ceremony brought out Yugen, subconscious beauty felt and responded to as that which perfects.
In its final form, Yugen expresses profundity and evanescence detached from physical reality and indicates a mystical state in which beauty is but a premise, unknowable through rational analysis. Thus Yugen cannot be apprehended intellectually, but rather exists below the merely visual on a level of inner experience. Provoked by an object that causes us to feel something, it does not exist objectively, but is the subjective experience of the human being, who viewing the external forms of superficial beauty, finds true loveliness beneath the surface.
Yugen underpins Noh drama, which is highly stylized and symbolic. It takes place on a bare stage with a single pine tree painted on a backdrop. The stage is open on 3 sides so that the actors speak directly to the hearts of each individual member of the audience, who through intuitive insight grasps the profundity of the revelation of the nature of the main character, generally a woman.
These are the concepts which have guided my figurative works, which were worked out totally by computer, using Adobe Photoshop to create the preparatory study for a painting.
Each work always focuses on a woman, who is placed in the context of a specific environment, natural or constructed, with a flower used as a symbol of external attractiveness, that original concept in Noh. Each work is set in a specific place, which is the counterpart of the Noh stage. The sites are those areas of the modern world experiencing the trauma of finding true identity in a pluralistic reality that continues traditions in some form, but which is also industrializing and modernizing. The goal is to evoke the essence of the woman in a particular situation in the modern world.
