Sketching in Kyoto Japan

 Sketchless in Japan could be the title for this post. Before my wife Chris and I left for our three week Kyoto adventure fellow sketchers, friends and associates said, "we can hardly wait to see your journal sketches from Japan." No pressure there!
Kyoto is a national treasure city full of beautiful temples and shrines, all set in spectacular landscaped environments. As a landscape designer with a history of designing and installing ponds, rock out-cropping's and gardens, I was beyond inspired by what I saw. On the other hand, as a sketcher who loves harbors, boats, mountains, expansive perspectives of sea and sky as well as historic city architecture, I was definitely in foreign territory.
After a week of little to no sketching, I really wondered what was wrong. After all I'm supposed to be an urban sketcher passionately capturing life on the move in any situation. I thought about what the portrait painter, teacher-philosopher Robert Henri wrote in his book, The Art Spirit, "What we need is more a sense of the wonder of life, and less a business of making a picture."  The Canadian artist Robert Genn titled one of his weekly blogs, Persistence of Wonder, where he opens by stating, "The making of art can be divided into three main camps: Subject driven, style driven and idea driven. He follows by stating, "Subject is a secure camp."
I finally let go of what I thought I had to do and allowed the experience of being in this magical spirit filled kingdom to take hold. And on our return, flying east into the morning sunrise, seeing the Olympic, Cascades and Puget Sound in the morning light reminded me of why I love living where I live and why it is so easy for me to sketch without thinking about making art and how for me, it is all about subject. Confessions of marine artist with a deep passion for the Pacific Northwest.