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For me its an incredible honor to expose my ink paintings in Japan. Thanks to Shotei Ibata-san, whos work I admire so much - and for the kindness to invite my to expose with him and for the cities of Kyoto and Cologne to invite me for this purpose.
My Bokuseki-like or sumi-e paintings are paintings who don't want to imitate east Asian ink painting, they try to be a combination of eastern and western art.
I tried to acquire the four different basic techniques of applying ink, in addition to “dry” also moist, light and dark, which constitute the basic skills of painting with ink.
Bokuseki are the living document of a very intensivly lived moment. Bokuseki emerges in a very short unrepeatable moment of meditation. Since the early 70ies I try to paint with east Asian ink. I begans with the first look to east asian paintinmgs specially ink painting from 12th to 17th century by master like Sesshu Toyo, Hasegawa Tōhaku, and Hakuin who initiating koan studies with a new student created this koan -- "what is the sound [or voice] of one hand?" Often incorrectly translated as "the sound of one hand clapping," Hakuin's "one hand," or sekishu, is probably the most famous Zen koan, the one people have heard of even if they have no idea what "Zen" or "koans" are.
Also the Chinese painters , Mu Shi, Bada Shanren and Shi Tao, who said "citation ( seitation)" : If someone asks whether I [Shi Tao] follow the Southern or the Northern School, or whether either school follows me, I hold my belly laughing and reply, 'I always use my own method! He called a painting 10,000 ugly Inkblots. So I try to do: I don't follow a canon and no ideology, for my its not important if my work is called modern or if its trendy .
For my was very important the former direktor of the Cologne Museum for East-Asian Art: Prof. Roger Goepper specially his togeher with Hiroko Yoshikawa published book: Sho Calligraphy and painting of Japan from the 7.th till 19th century, exposition in Cologne in 1975.
Most impresive for me the last painting and poem of a Zen Master who dying writes and paints his last poem, and with his dying breath the brush falls down, this also my desire.
One Zen master, Takuan, was on his deathbed. He asked for some paper and his calligraphic brush. It has been a long-standing tradition in the world of Zen that masters when departing from life give their last statement, written. Takuan wrote on the paper a Japanese word which means dream. He laughed, closed his eyes, the brush dropped from his hand…
Also the Chinese Dao is of great influence for me
A citation of Zhuang Zi:
If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument.
He speaks that the human culture rises there where me meet the not-nessesary and the not-usefull, this thinking is very strange for western people.
Huang Binghong says : Dry ink means: that the ink is dryer than the bitter wind of autumn yet containing moisture as soft as spring rain.
Ink which, in the words of Huang Binhong, has to be as dry as an autumn wind when using the “dry brush” technique, but at the same time as moist as spring rain.
My ideal is to become a bunjin-ga, in chinese a wen ren hua, a literate painter, a hermit.
I even started to write Haiku-like poems about graveyards of children in Ireland. .