Like most people who live with hand made things,
over the years we have traded for or collected a number of prints and paintings
from both American and Japanese artists. Our Japanese print taste runs along
the lines of Mori Yoshitoshi, Oda Mayumi, Clifton Karhu and the obligatory
Saito Kiyoshi, more modern artists and though we have a few Nihonga, Rimpa and
Zenga kakejiku scrolls and water colors it wasn't until my first introduction
to the paintings of Tsukigata Nahiko that I ever considered owning an oil
painting. I saw my first Tsukigata painting in 1991 or 1992 while in Japan, it
was a really large painting of a Notre Dame in Paris that filled the wall of a
reception room in a famous hotel in Osaka. I was in awe of the scale, grandeur
and power of the painting but it was the vibrant surface which seemed alive and
the thick texture that had me sold. Now don't get me wrong, having seen great
paintings of a variety of museums, I would take a Monet, Homer or Church any
day but like his ceramics, I find the painting of Tsukigata engaging with a
power and manner that speaks to me on almost every level.
Illustrated is a painting of Fuji-yama by Tsukigata
Nahiko that was painted in the late 80s or early 90s. I love the way he has
captured the snow capped Fuji with the whole image being created in a rather fluid
and dynamic impasto style bringing the piece into three dimensions and almost a
tactile as his pottery.
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