New Year's Cards

Before 1907 Japanese postal law didn't allow a message on the same side of a post card as the address. People were forced to write on the image.

Here is a New Years card sent in 1905 to an American friend.

People stopped sending battle ships for new years some time ago.

New Year’s cards themselves are now dwindling. Line messages prosper. I still send. Today I will decide 2020’s design. Shall I go with the year of the rat? Or Icarus?

My calendar

I mark my year by my exhibition. It is pulls me thru the year. And now that it is done I know my year is almost over. Gallery walls come down. Sold work will be packed up and delivered.

Time then to clean, to prepare to meet a new year, and to know that I will be being pulled along by the next exhibition.

Painting the exhibition

For the last three days I have been doing a small oil painting before the exhibition opens.

It is rare for me to use oils. Even more rare in a room full of ink paintings.

Below are the painting at the end of each days work. I thought it was finished the first day, by the evening I realized the proportions were wrong. This sort of revision is impossible in ink painting.

What Kind of Art?

After so many years working with ink and washi in Japan Mr. Hathaway finds himself in a situation not unlike Frank Lloyd Wright designing the second Imperial Hotel - Foreigners looking at the hotel said, “So very Japanese.” Japanese said, “So very foreign.”

Mr. Hathaway studied oil painting and worked in the art business in New York before escaping to Japan and taking up the tools and materials of ink painting, using them to create a new world.

His exhibition, Naked Again, will show a dozen new works, ink on Japanese paper, landscapes for the most part.

If you find yourself in Tokyo at the end of October, please stop by!

Open this weekend and the first weekend of November.

the walls

I was about to hang my new exhibition and was struck by the condition of the walls. they have been red for a number of years and were exciting, but have started to look old.

It is time for a change. Above is the before picture.

October Exhibition!

Preparing my October show I am discovering things I had forgotten. soon I will start putting them on the wall.

This years exhibition will be the last weekend of October and the first weekend of November. Please stop by.