2005 December - Rebecca Benoit: Japanese Brush Paintings

Seeking Convergence in Landscape:
Seven years in Honshu Japanese Brush Paintings
by Rebecca Benoit

Click here for exhibit photos: coming soon!

One of the most positive ways of adapting to any new culture is to seek the similarities, not differences with our own. It is in precisely this way that we gain our bearings while discovering a new land, people and culture. A pure landscape devoid of human presence The artistic recreation of important scenes serves to stimulate our memories and quiet the mind. Compelling images, connected to personal history – namely, a view that becomes part of the soul are cemented into the mind’s eye. One of the first ‘memories’ I needed to paint for myself when I came to Japan in 1998 was the large landscape in oil which opens this exhibit.

I wanted to recreate this familiar landscape so it would transport me back to a place of comfort whenever I felt homesick. From the time I was a girl, we traveled north of Ottawa, into the Gatineau Valley where I spent every weekend and nearly two months each summer. The low, rounded hills I saw across this still lake face a solitary island. In the evening, I saw only the stars – and there was not another being within sight. All this contributed to my perception of beauty: namely a pure landscape devoid of human presence or influence. In the first four years of my Suibokuga (brush painting) studies with Tamaki-sensei、I lived in a concrete neighborhood in a city of 500,000 sixty kilometres south of Osaka. Initially, my desire to find nature consisted of floral studies: this was a way to essentialize the landscape and block out my surroundings of pavement and wires.

I was captivated by the way my teacher captured the essence of a flower with the richness of ink. But perhaps the greatest influence on my painting happened when I moved to the historical Wakaura area. I came to my twice-weekly lessons with the desire to capture the new landscape which I’ve grown so attached to. Whether it is the lyrical willows which grew on either side of Furobashi during the Edo period, or the perfect row of pines which grace Kataonami today; the picturesque temple and pavilion on Tamatsushima, or the shrines with their ancient staircases of stone, all of these signify to me an intensely beautiful and compelling landscape.

After many years of living in Japan, a nation of millions, I continued to paint landscapes devoid of people, erasing the trace of humanity, preserving the purity of the landscape. However, indisputable traces of human agency remain in the distant temples or sails on the horizon in my paintings. This is the reality of life on Honshu, an island which human occupation has placed its mark on the landscape. Of all the paintings here, the one I feel is most successful, is that of Horaiwa: a rugged water-worn stone, with a few tiny pine trees clinging to life, sculpted by the wind and waves: this is a scene that is quite similar to one on a lake in eastern Quebec where I grew up.

In the end, we come full circle: our eye seeks what is most familiar within any new landscape. We seek similarities to give ourselves comfort when we find ourselves in an environment to fundamentally different or alien. It is in these primordial stones, rocks, trees in Wakaura that create a bridge for me between Japan and Canada.

Having first studied drawing and lithography for six months in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Rebecca was drawn to the simplicity of black and white Japanese brush paintings. She currently paints in Ottawa, Canada.

To see more of Rebecca’s paintings:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/waka2005art/my_photos

You can contact her at beccabenoit[at]yahoo.com