issue 23 - Back Again!
Pete On Art
Creative Discoveries In Art And Spirit Issue 23
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Table of Contents:
1. Back Again!
2. Artwork Outdoors.
3. Responsibility is Ours! View Art That Matters:
4. Local Webinar Event, Saving our Local Coastal Nature Reserves.
5. Tessier Gardens Devon – Painting Outdoors
6. Kenji Yoshida – Artist of The Soul
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1.0 Back Again!
First let me apologise for the lengthy delay since I last published a Newsletter there is no real excuse I have simply been wrapped up in the ever changing acts of life. I am sure many of you know how it is and time just keeps on relentlessly ticking.
Hopefully this newsletter will make up for the delay with some very interesting video about artist Kenji Yoshida and his work with his art and desire to promote peace. The second video is a recent one I created when working out doors at Tessier Gardens in Devon. I have a new camera setup which I trialled and will be doing more if there is enough interest.
I am in the process of redesigning parts of my website and improving some aspects of its functionality. Not being very tech savvy this is taking a lot of time and energy but I am determined to have it sorted by the end of July. I will then be set to add more interesting content for art enthusiasts in the coming months.
Please enjoy the video’s and by all means email me with any comments, suggestions or topics you would like me to discuss for the future within my videos and Newsletters. Thank You!
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2.0 Artwork Outdoors:
We members of Devon Art Society have been going out to paint since May and continue each Tuesday through the summer months. Painting en plein air is challenging but well worth the effort. Here are a few of my works to date. The first and latest is Tessier Gardens, St Marychurch Devon, the second is The Drive at Lupton House Devon, and the third Victoria Gardens Toquay.
3.0 Responsibility Is Ours! View art that matters!
We the peoples and ancestors of the people who many years ago travelled the globe claiming lands and all that reside within them as our own. Simply by planting the flag, making a statement and forcibly repelling other would be invaders. We are responsible!
What we did next and continue to do to this day is unforgivable and at times seemingly unstoppable. We continue to remove resources from across the globe, destroying natural habitat for nature and the cultures that hang by a thread. Ownership has largely moved from the kings and queens to featureless international conglomerates.
Oppression of cultures continue and in a small effort to right that wrong I ask you to view and enjoy the artwork of a few native Americans who are being exhibited here: https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item?id=1017
Every click every view may send a digital signal, a message to say we care. It may help reverse the trend of oppression. We in the UK may not be able to attend in person, but we can benefit by seeing the few images shown online. It has been 50 years since the last such exhibition, that is shameful!
Enjoy!
4.0 Local Webinar Event to Potentially Help Save our Coastal Nature Reserves:
Time to take an interest in our coastal nature Reserves.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/save-our-south-coast-tickets-1992769425997?aff=oddtdtcreator
5.0 Title – Tessier Gardens Devon. Painting outdoors in Oil Colour
The latest YouTube Video from me. I am trying out a new video camera setup, so any comments or suggestions will be most appreciated. Music is Forest Mysteries by kind permission of Enrico Fabio Cortese.
6.0 Kenji Yoshida – Artist of The Soul by Stonedog Productions on YouTube
Kenji Yashida https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41iwlbyE5PE
Kenji Yoshida - Artist of the Soul is an in-depth profile of the 83 year-old former Kamikaze pilot and Avant Garde artist, Kenji Yoshida. Directed by Ishmael Annobil, this lyrical film is the first ever feature about the artist. It presents a rare interview with Yoshida, intercut with eloquent analyses and anecdotes by his agent, curators and friends. It also explores the fact that, despite his historical status as the only living artist to be given a solo exhibition at the British Museum, Yoshida remains relatively unknown in Japan. After WWII, Yoshida moved to France, to expand his understanding of other art forms and cultures, understudying contemporary masters of print making, such as Irishman Stanley Hayter, subsequently receiving a free house and studio from the French government. He later travelled many parts of the world, including Israel, where he worked in a Kibbutz, and also Mexico, where he made throwaway calligraphic scrolls of the local flora and fauna. Saved from the dustbin by his agent, Jose Ferez Kuri, the scrolls would later inspire the British Museum to grant Yoshida his unprecedented solo exhibition in 1993. Despite his refined and pioneering work, Yoshida only sold his first painting at the age of 53, after working for many years as a waiter and fishmonger in Paris to finance his art practice. Luckily, the French government had given him free accommodation/atelier, enabling him to be prolific and experimental throughout. He spoke little French and an archaic Japanese, which made him almost language-less to most people, and yet everyone understood him completely, as though he transmitted his thoughts rather than words. Central to this film is Yoshida's profound spirituality and his philosophy on life. Almost all his paintings are titled 'La Vie', Life or the Act of Living. He owed this to his experiences in WWII and what his art teacher had told him before it: "Take up the paintbrush, not the gun." Yoshida believed that when his teacher died after the war, he left him the legacy to capture life: "Before the war I thought with his head, but after the war I learned to think with my soul". This underlined his belief that he embodied the spirits of his departed friends and family. In later years, Yoshida moved on from the perfection of black and white pigments and embraced resplendent metal colours, because he believed that God was gold and silver in complexion. The film is marked by delectable tableaux of Yoshida's work through the ages, from prints to his massive, spare canvasses which are known to reduce audiences to tears. Kenji Yoshida - Artist of the Soul was shot within the context of Inochi To Heiwa, 2007, Yoshida's third exhibition, at the October Gallery, London. It features interviews with his agent, Jose Ferez Kuri, Lawrence Smith (former Keeper Emeritus of Japanese art at the British Museum, and curator of Yoshida's major exhibition there), Elisabeth Lalouschek (Curator of Inochi To Heiwa), Chili Hawes (Director of the October Gallery), and Joji Hirota (Japanese musician). Kenji Yoshida - Artist of the Soul features music composed and performed specially by Joji Hirota at the Yoshida's British Museum exhibition of 1993, and also a live improvisation on flute, titled 'Improvisation pour la Vie' at the Inochi To Heiwa exhibition, 2007. Kenji Yoshida - Artist of the Soul was screened at UNESCO in October 2008 as part of Yoshida's testimonial exhibition Vie Et Paix. This gave Yoshida the opportunity to see his film. Sadly, he passed away soon afterwards, inspiring Ishmael Annobil and Jose Ferez Kuri to include his funeral/interment, at Montparnasse Cemetery, in the film. Almost a year to the day, Jose Ferez Kuri, too, passed away, in Yoshida's atelier, while cataloguing the master's works, and curating Yoshida's first posthumous exhibition for the October Gallery. Shot with rudimentary equipment, and without external sound recorders, Kenji Yoshida-Artist of the Soul exemplifies instinctual filmmaking, and the journalistic pragmatism of its director. Classically, this historical film about one of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st Centuries was shot on a sub-micro budget. Writer/Producer/Director: Ishmael Annobil | Cinematography: Ishmael Annobil, Abiy Mamo, Anita Keymatlian and Dave Butler | Editing: Damian Kwasnik l Dave Butler, Merethe Rosvold, and Francesco Carradonna | Extra Editing: Silvia Biagioni, Hannah Newman-Smart | Associate Producer: Jose Ferez Kuri | Sound Post: Vanessa Tate and Dominique Devoucoux of Tate Post | Extra Sound Post: Ricardo Pujol | Music: Joji Hirota.