6.0 Japanese Kimono Influences

   Japanese kimono are exceptional works of art.  They are both functional and wearable art, yet retain their grace and beauty for centuries as they are handed down through the generations.  Two particular textile artists who designed for kimono have become very inspirational to my art: Keisuke Serizawa and Itchiku Kubota.  These textile artists and kimono designers have influenced me to create kimono-inspired paintings on cedar panels.  The result is a fusion of Northwest Coast Indian and Celtic Revival decorative arts with a Japanese twist.  The first painting I did, Serizawa’s Kimono (Summer, 2014), was in response to Serizawa’s design for his kimono entitled “Seabream”.  The shape of the frame delineated the kimono shape while the bird motif (which incorporated elements of Ozette-style incised carving) represented Serizawa’s “katazome” stencile-dyed fish pattern.  Serizawa’s “Seabream” kimono can be seen at 2 minutes 43 seconds into the following short youtube video entitled “Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design at Japan Society”.

     Soon after completing this, I was talking to our friend Sue D. and she mentioned another kimono artist that she learned about while visiting Japan by the name of Itchiku Kubota.  I began to read about Kubota and fell in love with his beautiful kimono landscapes using the “tsuiighana” method of tie-dying silk.  He inspired me to do a second kimono-style cedar painting incorporating his idea of placing kimonos side-by-side to create a landscape.  I entitled it A Tribute to Itchiku Kubota: Ozette Sunset (Spring, 2015).  I painted five stylized kimono outlines on the cedar panel and on it, I tried to recreate one of the beautiful sunsets that I was able to experience while living at Ozette.  To find out more about Kubota’s  beautiful kimonos, I have included the first of a three-part youtube video documentary called “Kimono As Art”.

     Finally, I combined the styles of these two textile masters into a third painting on cedar called In the Spirit of Serizawa & Kubota (Spring, 2015).  In this painting I created  three side-by-side kimono outlines in tribute to Kubota.  Then, in tribute to Serizawa, I painted within the kimonos stylized, repetitive patterns (adding a bit of Archibald Knox’s Celtic Revival style) representing ocean waves below a cloud-filled sky at sunset. 

     Kimonos will continue to inspire me with their beauty, functionality, and craftsmanship for a long time.  I’m sure that many of my paintings in the future will owe much of their creative spirit to kimonos and to the master designers and craftsmen that made them.