Painting and Drawings in Japan: Landscape Drawings and Notes

Study Takeda Castle - Asago

Pencil, coloured pencil, gouache on paper

My current landscape drawing praxis is not often executed directly from a chosen motif, (as it serves no purpose for what I desire to achieve which is how my optics and the store house of memory create a strangeness of natural vision as a drawn image) in the sense that the light is constantly changing, shadows shifting plus because clock time and space presents us with the dilemma, that no two moments are exactly the same. So the idea of representation of a drawn motif cannot be at all achieved in any accurate sense.

Photographing the landscape and drawing the terrain back in the studio from my I Pad or computer screen is beneficial as it eliminates the idea of accuracy and relies on phenomena of memory and how the exhibits itself as an drawn image on paper.

The created drawn image on paper I call the strangeness of natural vision in drawing because the traditions of form, perspective and tone, I do not religiously adhere too but rather let an idiosyncratic image with its associate impact be the final artwork.

Similarly the British artist Samual Palmer 1805 - 81 stated in a letter to his friend/artist George Richmond about beauty and weirdness in form, meaning it was his optical personality revealing itself as a drawn image that appears to be now seem rather accurate delivery from his store house of memory from his odd natural vision.

– one of the very deepest sayings I have met with in Lord Bacon seems to me to be ‘There is no excellent beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.’

London Book Review Vol.27. No 22 November 2005, At The British Museum, Samual Palmer’s Dream Landscapes Peter Campbell

With the aforementioned remarks being stated here are some images that contain the memories of the Nishi Ku landscape in Hyogo, with there marks, textures, hues, tonalities plus forms along imbued with the idiosyncratic oddities caused by natural vision.

Please enjoy these images from around Nishi Ku._

Peter Davidson