Acceptance

These small mixed media watercolors were begun in Meguro, Tokyo in the Fall of 2015 in the shadow and aftermath of my Crossroads of Curiosity exhibition in London. While the grand display of murals in the Piazza of the British Library was a very satisfying achievement, on an inner creative level it felt monolithic in its focus, and also constrained to a high formality bereft of the intricate spontaneity of the inner psychic dynamics which I savor as an ecstasy of free expression. In going from artistic expression on a monumental scale in a formal setting in London to just scrawling away without a care on a tiny watercolor tablet at metro stations and cafes throughout Tokyo, I found a great liberation; I took the first steps towards real self-acceptance of my natural drawing style (I have often strove to attain something stylistically outside or beyond the characteristic idiosyncracies of my hand).

These watercolors were made without concern for their outcome, i.e.; I didn’t care how they looked or whether they were good or not. They are what I could do with watercolors and ink pens of various sorts (I was especially enthralled with the calligraphy brush-pens available everywhere in Tokyo). I would improvise something on one page of a small watercolor block in a few hours and then start another. About 20 were completed in all, and I later came to call them "Acceptance", because the improvisational nature of the drawing felt like a kind of self-acceptance and that really differed from the exacting standards of the large scale "Crossroads of Curiosity" I had created in 2014-15.

Henry Miller wrote an essay on watercolor painting in which he exuberantly revels in his ineptitude as a watercolorist, frankly stating how he just didn’t give a damn how they turned out because he was having so much fun just being himself, accepting himself, and making a mess with the paints - so Henry Miller! My mind often turned to these sentiments of Miller’s, and the “Acceptance Watercolors” were made in a similar carefree spirit. They are not just paintings, more importantly to me they are the by products of a spiritual evolution from egotistical insecurity to psychic self acceptance. And that is why I have titled the series, “Acceptance”.