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IX The Hermit
A Japanese Ukiyo-e
(pictures of the floating world) artist named Katsushika Hokusai
created a very well known series of block prints called
Thirty Six Views of Mt. Fuji. Of the 36, the most famous is
titled The Great Wave off Kanagawa. It is from this
beautiful block print that I drew inspiration for my image of
the Hermit.
Hokusai explored
Mt. Fuji from many different landscapes, angles, weather, and
lighting conditions, and though the geometry of the great
volcano was shifted in nuance from our perspective, the mountain
itself always remained the same.
The Hermit takes
the place of Mt. Fuji in my painting, a singular, unchangeable
spot in a vast, broiling sea of variation. That spot is the
point where each of us, alone, views the universe around us and
it is also the singular, larger truth that each of us only sees
a small portion of.
Each view, no
matter how different, is the truth; like the Buddhist story of
the blind men and the elephant. Four blind men were placed
around an elephant and told to describe what the elephant looked
like. “A pillar” said one. The others said “a wall”, “a piece
of cloth”, “a rope”. They were all correct, seeing only one
limited view of the whole elephant.
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