"The Great Wave Off Hokusai"
I was drawn to each of these subjects for their distant resonance with Hokusai's ocean archetype, "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa." The pairing and titling of the images alienates each from its original context and unites them to suggest something else altogether. My diptych is a bow to the iconic woodblock designs of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The work is intended to give the viewer, first, a fresh frisson of the sea-splash that Hokusai actually witnessed and portrayed some two centuries ago; directly followed by a sense of that event's - as well as the woodblock's - utter remoteness to us now, separated forever by a vast ocean of time, and connecting with us in the present day only as a striking visual idea, the epitome of water in motion.
TITLE - "The Great Wave Off Hokusai"
WHERE - Dead bush in vacant lot, El Cajon, California (2016) and shopping mall walkway after rainfall, San Diego, California (2015).
