At seventy-three I learned a little about the real structure of animals, plants, birds, fishes and insects. Consequently when I am eighty I’ll have made more progress. At ninety I’ll have penetrated the mystery of things. At a hundred I shall have reached something marvelous, but when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, the smallest dot, will be alive.
–Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)
I really like the bit of wisdom above from the great Hokusai, both for his optimism on aging as well as the idea that as he continues to progress his work will reach a point where everything he paints– even something as simple as a dot– has a life force within it.
Attaining that life force in any one piece, where the painting transcends what you put into it, is a rare and difficult thing for any artist to achieve. This idea that you might one day reach a point where your work has moved from a product of thought and craft to a transcendent expression of the spirit often seems beyond our reach or even our aim.
But perhaps we should keep it as an aim in our mind, along with the idea that we will continue to progress as we age, even if it is stored in rarely visited corner. If we hold on to it perhaps we will subconsciously find our way to that goal. And when we are a hundred and ten, the dots we paint will have that same life force as those created by Hokusai.
It’s something to hope for…
I’ve included a few of Hokusai’s paintings beyond his famed wave and landscapes. I love his fish pieces and the raven is wonderful. Enjoy!
I came across this post from a few years back. It’s one that had slipped my mind but was appreciative for the reminder that art and creation have no endpoints within a person. More than that, this idea from Hokusai of the energy and life force of his work continually concentrating itself until it reaches the size of a dot jumped out at me.
It reminds me of the singularity theory first put forth by Stephen Hawking, which states that when a star dies it collapses into itself until it is finally a single tiny point of zero radius, infinite density, and infinite curvature of spacetime at the heart of the black hole formed from the star’s collapse. A single point of immense mass and energy.
A dot filled with everything.
It also struck me that much of my work in recent times has focused on the sun/moon as a central element and it has taken on more and more prominence as the years pass. I often see it as this same sort of Hokusai-like dot, the energy of the painting concentrating itself in and around this ball.
There are future blog entries coming on this subject. But for this morning I am going to just enjoy some of Hokusai’s wonderful fishes. And that raven!
FYI- I am aware that the second from the bottom image is not a Hokusai painting but rather one from Hiroshige that is styled after Hokusai. I am including it because it was in the original post and I like it. And that’s good enough for me.
Redtree Times 