Recently completed mixed-media assemblage ‘Sacred Mountain (Mon Amour)’..

From the studio, recently completed mixed-media assemblage ‘Sacred Mountain (Mon Amour)’. This work is a difficult one, the frame comes from an old seascape painting of my father’s. It is based on the idea of Katsushika Hokusai - Under the Wave off Kanagawa ... (c.1831) with Mount Fuji in the background, and the struggling fishing boats, apparently it is an allergory on Japan’ struggle with the outer world during its self imposed exile. My thinking is, what happended if the wave crashed on the beach, the devastation, the destruction that would be evident, like the tsunami and the Fukashima nuclear powerplant disaster.

The top of the painting: The rising sun behind the clouds, with Zenga ink style brushmarks, the mountain shrouded in mist, the devastation in the middle foreground and then at the bottom is the rocks, pushing out of the frame, the washed up bamboo and twigs, pushed through the picture frame.