Blog - Page 4 of 57 - Iskra Fine Art

Armchair Travel: Notes on Britain and Rory Pilgrim’s RAFTS

December 19, 2023 by Iskra Leave a Comment

The Slough Monoprint by Iskra — *The Slough, Unique Transfer Print*

“I think one of the most precious things we can do is also think about dreaming or the imagination as a support structure. It is something that is rudimental to our existence.” Rory Pilgrim

When I was 10 my brothers and I built a raft. I have no memory of how we started, although I suspect it was from laziness: a derelict half-boat set adrift by some other sailor on the lake and found by us among the pontoons. We captured it just in time to lash the rotting planks back together and haul new wood from land to make it last another summer. I can see us wading waist deep, hammering, knotting rope, balancing on one foot and falling into the lake, and somewhere in the vivid picture of the waves and the light glinting is a thick red book bobbing against the wood like a tiny tugboat. Books do not float, so I do not know how this could be. But there was a book, it was red, and it was discussed. There was some acknowledged mystery, and I am sure if I asked either of my brothers what book it was and what author they would say they remembered nothing but the pages: how limp they were with the weight of water but how the book refused to sink.

Tonight, contemplating travel across an ocean, I sat down to confront paralysis about my itinerary in England. Every week I stare at maps; I draw [Read more…]

New Wabi Sabi Minimalism: Expressive Ink Painting Abstraction

November 10, 2023 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Inkstone and Brush

New Minimalist Modern Art for Interiors

I have long been in love with the idea of the Kakemono, or hanging scroll, that brings elegance to a vertical space in the home. These new pieces are created with washes of ink with brushes and other studio tools. The washes and calligraphic markings are then blended and composed digitally in improvisational sequences that suggest landscape, the memory of place and the moods of weather. A muted monochrome palette gives them a photographic feeling, and as with photographs they can be printed in warm tones or cool. The Kakemono form lends itself best to paper or fabric. I like to use a fine-grained slightly iridescent canvas from Hahnemuhle.

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Sources of Inspiration: Hokusai and England

November 6, 2023 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Japanese Garden in Fall photography by Iskra — *A Moment of Refuge, Seattle Japanese Garden ©Iskra Johnson*

October in the Pacific Northwest is a moody season. The rains have come, and the fugue state of grayness that leads to indoors brooding requires acts of increasing will to resist. Sunday I felt myself on the cusp of succumbing to what the Buddhists aptly call The Third Hindrance of Sloth and Torpor. Seattle’s caffeine economy is built on what may seem like indulgence: yet consumption of caffeine is actually the first step in Spiritual Effort. I dutifully poured three cups of tea and purified my mind.

Once prodded out the door and feeling clouds on my face I came back to life. The innumerable grays of our skies offer a perfect foil for color, and walking through the blur of crimsons, burnt gold and lichens filled me with calm elation. Still facing East after seeing SAM’s Hokusai, I prolonged the spell of the exhibit with a visit to the Japanese Garden. As I walked through the Japanese garden each tree and stone seemed redrawn in ink in isometric perspective, and I half expected my viewfinder to appear with parallelograms drawn across the glass. Hokusai at Seattle Art Museum details paper and wabi sabi

When we are barraged daily with thousands of images seen online it is easy to forget the power of an image seen literally on screen, as in a painting on a folding screen of silk, from hundreds of years ago, holding history present with the physicality of thread. My favorite images from the Hokusai prints showed the ghost seepage of aged rice paste and seams where sheets of paper or silk overlapped. Seen close I noticed embossments of cloud forms I had never caught in reproductions, and this evidence of the physical making impressed memory on me as a bodily thing, amplifying the exhibit’s power. [Read more…]

New Images from The Gardener’s Almanac: Hydrangea!

October 22, 2023 by Iskra Leave a Comment

From the Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena: The Hydrangea

As the autumn rains come, I notice the squirrel’s moods are completely unaffected. The squirrel has never bothered to look up, whisker the the winds of change and pause for melancholy. His job is to keep his head down, dig up every newly potted bulb and chrysanthemum and shred the babytears growing between the pavers – and he does not stop to admire the hydrangeas. Praising flowers with long and homely names is my occupation.

The delicate colors of Hydrangea macrophylla normalis are welcome distraction from the calamities unfolding beyond the garden. I hope you will find respite in the Autumn Suite from the Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena, just published and available today in my shop. For my fellow writers and thinkers and keepers of friendships far flung, these are excellent with ginger biscuits and strong coffee or black tea with honey. All you need is a table, a pen and a quiet moment.

Hydrangea in Amber botanical image and greeting card — *Hydrangea in Amber*

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The Museum of Light: On the Cusp Between Summer and Fall

September 11, 2023 by Iskra 4 Comments

Painting Change Work in Progresss — *Painting Change, work in progress. Acrylic ink on panel.*

A visit to the Seattle Asian Art Museum, and a walk through change

In most museums sunlight is an unwelcome visitor. Light degrades what it warms. It is known to singe manuscripts until the edges crumble; it fades brocade and upends the narrative as the sword above the stag’s head turns from bloody to gray. Perhaps (though the back of the tapestry tells another story), it was not a hunt scene after all? History embrittles until truth hovers on the cusp.

Conservators learn: all interventions must be reversible. Do no harm, operate like a surgeon; use a fine brush, needle and thread, cotton soaked in brine. The ambered sky of a Dutch Harbor is lifted and revised– yet it may be revised again, when we know even more about the intended color of the afternoon.

Sunlight has no such mandate. Nor do the architects. In their contract skyscrapers need not return to 1930’s rooming house, or the even earlier logger’s cabin, nor must conservators be able to excavate the mastodon in the basement or lay out his bones in order. There is no past, all contracts are broken, there is only now, and it looks tall.

Construction site with tree and shadow Seattle — *Trees in balcony light.*

On Saturday morning I walked through the part of the city I call The Amazon, named for the river of money that flows through it. Streets were empty, stilled, and the only sounds were pennants rattling above construction sites and the thrum of machines that keep the buildings alive and young. The air was luxurious, as it has been all summer, but more particularly now as September days lead into fall. In the 13 years since I started documenting the neighborhood nearly everything old is gone. What is precious is vanishingly rare, and redefined by transience: the angle of light where it can steal through glass and concrete, a balcony still hugging privacy while another story waits to complete itself ten feet away. In a week the balcony will be in shade, eye to eye with a stranger’s living room. [Read more…]