墨絵

Sumi-e is literally ink painting, but this is misguiding as you're not actually using ink. What you are using is compressed carbon, much like a piece of charcoal, though hardened and bound together with resin. This is ground on the suzuri (ink-stone), with water, to make a dark, ink-like liquid. Even making good sumi requires patience, as too fast or rough of a grinding motion will put noticable chunks of carbon into your paint. But still, one never paints directly from the suzuri and instead transfers liquid to a separate dish. A separate dish is also needed to make lighter shades, and this is how faded brush strokes are created, dip one side of the brush into the light gray, then the other side into the black.

There is no such thing as erasure, and very little cover-up, in sumi-e or iwa-enogu used in japanese painting. This is the challenge, and the possibility. Each stroke is a singular expression, of something, be it the underside -curve of a sakura leaf, or the shadow of a green bell-pepper. It's a lot of fun, just moving the brush, but I don't have enough control. I used to sit in my room in Boston, with newsprint, brush and cheap black tempera, just to make endless marks. Now it's something different, change direction, change pressure, but with intent to represent. Like any kind of art, japanese painting is the real world, filtered through the artist. Sumi-e is the real world filtered through the artist, but also distilled by the artist so that each brush stroke becomes more than just a mark. It's technically challenging, but also expressively free.