FROGS POETRY CONTEST
ACRYLICS ON CEDAR W/RED OAK FRAME
FALL 2024
ACRYLICS ON CEDAR W/RED OAK FRAME
FALL 2024
For such small creatures, frogs have figured prominently in myths and legends across cultures and time. Maybe it is their ability to vocalize and to “sing” that has endeared them to humanity. While reading about Edo Period painting (Saunders, Rachel and Yukio Lippet, ©2020, Painting Edo: Selections from the Feinberg Collection of Art), I ran across a discussion about the frog poet, and it inspired this painting. Since the Heian Period, frogs were symbols of spring as their mating calls evoked a song of love. As haikai (and eventually haiku) developed as a poetic genre in the Edo Period, the theme of the frog poet carried over.
An early haikai by Yamazaki Sokan reads:
Hands to the floor
Formally reciting a poem
A frog
Yosa Buson’s later haikai continued this theme:
Jumping in
And washing off an old poem
A Frog
Mori Shuho’s hanging scroll Frogs in Sumo Match was the main inspiration for my painting. The designs for my frogs were inspired by Northwest Coast Native, Celtic, and Japanese art traditions. The stylized water is a modification of the Japanese textile pattern called seigaiha. I made the frame for this painting out of red oak using pegged, hand-joined, mortise-and-tenon construction methods. I used the Japanese technique (shou-sugi-ban) of charring and oiling the oak to finish the frame.
DIMENSIONS: HEIGHT: 15 1/8 inches
WIDTH: 17 1/8 inches
PRICE $450
An early haikai by Yamazaki Sokan reads:
Hands to the floor
Formally reciting a poem
A frog
Yosa Buson’s later haikai continued this theme:
Jumping in
And washing off an old poem
A Frog
Mori Shuho’s hanging scroll Frogs in Sumo Match was the main inspiration for my painting. The designs for my frogs were inspired by Northwest Coast Native, Celtic, and Japanese art traditions. The stylized water is a modification of the Japanese textile pattern called seigaiha. I made the frame for this painting out of red oak using pegged, hand-joined, mortise-and-tenon construction methods. I used the Japanese technique (shou-sugi-ban) of charring and oiling the oak to finish the frame.
DIMENSIONS: HEIGHT: 15 1/8 inches
WIDTH: 17 1/8 inches
PRICE $450
