THE FROG POET
ACRYLICS ON CEDAR W/RED OAK FRAME
FALL 2020
ACRYLICS ON CEDAR W/RED OAK FRAME
FALL 2020
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
Sakai Hoitsu’s seventh month painting from his Birds and Flowers of the Twelve Months shows a frog on a canna lily leaf alluding to the frog poet, and that inspired me and gave direction to my effort. I placed my frog on the floating leaf of a yellow pond lily (Nuphar polysepalum). Borrowing a common technique from the Japanese Rinpa School, I used a tarashikomi, or the “dripping in” effect for the lily leaves by allowing wet paint to diffuse over them. 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 inches
WIDTH: 17 inches
PRICE $450
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
Sakai Hoitsu’s seventh month painting from his Birds and Flowers of the Twelve Months shows a frog on a canna lily leaf alluding to the frog poet, and that inspired me and gave direction to my effort. I placed my frog on the floating leaf of a yellow pond lily (Nuphar polysepalum). Borrowing a common technique from the Japanese Rinpa School, I used a tarashikomi, or the “dripping in” effect for the lily leaves by allowing wet paint to diffuse over them. 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 inches
WIDTH: 17 inches
PRICE $450
Sakai Hoitsu--7th month panel
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detail showing frog
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