Info for solo exhibition ‘Trailing the North Wind’ by Blair Thomson at Glasgow Art Club

Opening Friday 1st May 2009, runs from 6th May to 29th May 12-5pm exc. Sun & Tues, closed 23rd-25th.

This exhibition focuses on a series of large organic ink paintings based on a variety of points of interest – Finnieston Crane, Tokyo Telecommunication Towers (two pieces), Matsumoto-jo Castle, MD-11 Engine at Schipol Airport Amsterdam and a twisted old Sakura (cherry blossom) tree near Matsumoto-jo Castle. Most of these works come out of a trip to Japan from 15 Dec ’08 to 16 Jan ’09, where I made a series of works in large, medium and small sketchbooks (some of the sketchbook work will be framed, and some displayed in display boxes along with other sketchbook work from Scotland or previous trips to Japan (I have visited 5 times now)).

As well as sketching in Tokyo (Telecom towers on the skyscraper skyline in central Tokyo at Hibiya; at the 400 year old Honmon-ji 5 storey pagoda in South West Tokyo; at the new concrete Senso-ji 5 storey pagoda) where I accidentally discovered the telecom towers and found as fascinating and similarly, if more complicatedly, dynamic as the sky-reaching pagodas. I visited many art museums and also my partner’s family in Toyama(Northern Japan) where I sketched, stocked up on materials and studied Sho calligraphy and markmaking with 89 year old Wakabayashi Sensei (Sensei means teacher or master), a distant relation of my girlfriend and luckily the top calligrapher in this part of Japan! I visited alone Matsumoto in Central Japan, on the other side of the Japan Alps from Toyama, to focus on tackling this castle from multiple viewpoints, as well as take in some ‘onsen’ hot baths! I worked on the spot for three days also finding the Sakura tree very interesting, and trying not to freeze as the temperature fell below zero during a night-time piece. I used fude (Japanese brushes), takepen (bamboo pen), sumi (Japanese ink), biros and markers for these pieces. I used similar techniques when making the big ones in the studios, often with markers with huge fude brushes (or one large fude only for the crane). The fude can make a variety of marks, from wet to dry, fine + slow to wide energetic blotches of ink. These ‘Sho’ calligraphy ‘fude’ brushes dipped in the ‘suzuri’ ink pot, or a large bucket for such huge pieces, worked flat on the studio floor (with no disturbance or music, just letting the brush do its work) on thin Japanese ‘Washi’ paper, is my favoured medium recently. One of the large pieces (the Castle) is on much heavier paper for a different, crisper finish. The large series will be stamped using ‘hanko’ stamps of my own design and mounted on fabric, hung in the Eastern ‘banner’ style with real impact in the well-proportioned Mackintosh designed Gallery. There is also a series of four orange and black ink pieces from different Japanese castles I visited in the past with great names too such as Marugame-jo meaning Round Tortoise Castle and Golden Turtle Castle at Matsuyama, both in the Southern island of Shikoku (visited Spring ’07).

There are large and small oils too, mainly works based on Scottish coastal structures like the signal beacon at South Queensferry and more abstract calligraphic work based on the Northern elements and light. These densely coloured and textured works on canvas and board contrast and complement the stark simplicity of the black and white pieces.

Although the subjects are often man-made, the pieces are organic and atmospheric in nature and are an attempt to translate the impact of the structures, tree or crane, capturing the freshness of the first glimpse, while allowing for creative transformation and a sense of strangeness in raw beauty to come through. The places are but waymarks on a poetic Northern trail, points along the wandering way of movement and solitude. Trying to grasp the ungraspable, that sense of open space/infinity of the world around us, with its energy and dynamics but also reposeful essence – this is why there is so much quiet, brushless areas in my pieces, which work in unison with the fresh, unfiddeled with marks – something I have learned from Eastern painting. Much of the thinking behind my work is inspired by Japanese poetry, especially the Haiku of Matsuo Basho (17th C) and the philosophy of Zen masters like Eihei Dogen (13th C), and some poetry will be included in the show to complement the paintings and add another aspect of Trailing the North Wind beyond the visual. However my interest in Japanese aesthetics dates to when I was a teenager watching Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ and his moody version of Macbeth ‘Throne of Blood’. After a successful degree show in ’02, first visited Japan that summer, immediately finding fascinating the Japanese way of thinking about aesthetics, and the Japanese landscape/urbanscape. Wakabayashi Sensei has invited me this summer to show some artwork, and possibly make a collaborative work with my images and his calligraphy, at his large 90th Birthday show in Toyama City Hall, which would be the first public exhibition of my work in Japan.