Travelers ©Kesler Woodward 2018 Acrylic on Canvas 48" x 60"
"The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat or in old age, leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home." Thus begins the great 17th Century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho's best known work, Narrow Journey to the Interior, a journal of prose and haiku recounting his journey through the far northern provinces of Japan.
Though Basho began his journey in the spring, for some years since my writer friend Frank Soos introduced me to it, I have read his account each fall. Those opening lines captured my imagination, and I've wanted to make a painting in response to them, but it's taken me this long to compose one.
As Sam Hamill, the best translator of Basho's work, says, Narrow Road to the Interior is much more than a travel journal, and Basho completely redefined both haiku and the form which combines short prose passages with haiku, called haibun.
Though my closest artistic alliances are with writers, I've only occasionally made paintings in response to specific written works. This one has been preying on my mind for some time, though. Finally, this fall, I felt that I was ready to tackle it, and it was a monthlong struggle, finding a way to turn it to my own devices. I'm happy to have found a way, within my own artistic vision, to respond to it.
Gorge Creek ©Kesler Woodward 2018 Acrylic on Canvas 20" x 10"
Travelers, a large 4' x 5' canvas, follows several smaller works that I've posted about earlier, and one other new one that I've completed since my last post. Gorge Creek is another tribute to one of my favorite places in Denali National Park, a valley that Dorli and I explored yet again this fall. We were turned aside from our intended route by bears descending to the drainage we were ascending. We retreated deliberately, but immediately, reminded that we were the visitors in their place, and that there were plenty of other places to explore.
