AUTUMN DEER
ACRYLICS ON CEDAR W/RED OAK FRAME
FALL 2022
ACRYLICS ON CEDAR W/RED OAK FRAME
FALL 2022
These cold, crisp, sun-filled days we’ve experienced lately have decidedly marked the heart of the autumn season. I particularly enjoy painting to the season, and several images regularly come to mind: the turning leaves, and the return of the swans and snow geese to the Skagit Valley. However, there are also several other autumnal motifs that I have learned to enjoy from studying Japanese art. Seasonality in Japanese culture has been well-documented for over a thousand years and has been an important component of art, poetry, and cuisine. Several motifs/themes are significant for autumn: flowering grasses, the full moon, and deer. “…in classical Japanese poetry, the image of the deer became associated with autumn and with the mournful, lonely cries of the stag looking for its mate. The deer thus became the embodiment of a particular emotional state as well as a seasonal marker of autumn…(Shirane,Haruo, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts, ©2012. p.27).” A poetic example is the following waka poem by Fujiwara no Sada’ie (waka is classic Japanese poetry consisting of five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic units).
The stag,
Makes his bed on thick-grown grass,
Wilting at the tips;
Beneath it, a plain,
The autumn wind is blowing.
Fujiwara no Sada’ie (better known to history as Teika) (1162-1241) is one of the four greatest Japanese poets. This poem is taken from ‘Lord Teika’s One Hundred Round Own Poem Poetry Competition’ (see https://www.wakapoetry.net/ ). My celebration of autumn thus includes these three main Japanese motifs. The design for the deer was inspired by both Northwest Coast Native and Celtic art traditions. The frame was made out of red oak using pegged, hand-joined, mortise-and-tenon construction methods. The Japanese technique (shou-sugi-ban) of charring and oiling the oak was used to finish the frame.
DIMENSIONS: HEIGHT: 14 ¼ inches
WIDTH: 20 inches
PRICE $475
The stag,
Makes his bed on thick-grown grass,
Wilting at the tips;
Beneath it, a plain,
The autumn wind is blowing.
Fujiwara no Sada’ie (better known to history as Teika) (1162-1241) is one of the four greatest Japanese poets. This poem is taken from ‘Lord Teika’s One Hundred Round Own Poem Poetry Competition’ (see https://www.wakapoetry.net/ ). My celebration of autumn thus includes these three main Japanese motifs. The design for the deer was inspired by both Northwest Coast Native and Celtic art traditions. The frame was made out of red oak using pegged, hand-joined, mortise-and-tenon construction methods. The Japanese technique (shou-sugi-ban) of charring and oiling the oak was used to finish the frame.
DIMENSIONS: HEIGHT: 14 ¼ inches
WIDTH: 20 inches
PRICE $475
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Suzuki Harunobu The Cry of the Stag
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Gary Giovane
La Conner, WA
gioart13@yahoo.com
La Conner, WA
gioart13@yahoo.com