Some winter days are so wretched it’s difficult to enjoy communing directly with nature even briefly. Those days are a wonderful time to marvel at an artist’s interpretation of the natural world in the comfort of a warm, well-lit gallery. A new exhibition titled Looking East at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment’s Community Gallery displays the work of artist and illustrator Jay Alexander of Belchertown.
Alexander’s paintings offer fresh interpretations in ink and watercolor of common themes in ancient Chinese painting including plum blossoms, orchids, birds and butterflies. Alexander says he wanted to stay with the ancient natural themes but to render them “through my own experience and sensibilities.” The works are deceptively simple yet visually rich, drawing the viewer into their lyrical, dreamlike atmosphere. The paintings are a welcome distraction from the nasty bite of winter weather.
Alexander studied Far Eastern language, art and architecture at Harvard University in the late 1960s and then came to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied art history with a concentration in Far Eastern art.
“I’ve always painted,” he explains, but his venture into Chinese painting began with a course he took many years ago in Chinese painting and calligraphy. The teacher was a Chinese artist who instructed the group in some basics of Chinese brush painting, including how to hold the brush, essential brush strokes and the various effects of different types of rice paper. He uses very porous rice paper, which has a tendency to bleed and blur strokes of color. This results in many “accidental effects,” he says. “You can’t control it. It’s spontaneous. What’s done is done.”
Chinese and Japanese poetry inspires some of his paintings, and several of his works include the poems. “Basho’s Whippoorwill,” a reference to the 17th-century Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho, depicts the bird surrounded by sketchy horizontal and vertical branches, a quiet composition grays and blacks. At the top are the words of Basho’s haiku, inked in somber black: “Twilight whippoorwill/Whistle on, sweet deepener/of dark loneliness.”
Alexander works professionally as a book designer and illustrator, mostly of science textbooks. For this work he relies exclusively on computer graphic techniques. He sees some connection between his work as an illustrator and his artwork. “There are graphic elements in the paintings,” he says, such as the placement of a rectangular patch of pale yellow sunlight in the middle of a loose arrangement of plum blossoms.
Alexander says that although the techniques he learned in the class “were very traditional and have ancient roots, over the years my painting style evolved into what would have been impossible in ancient times, or certainly unorthodox.” For example, in some of his paintings he uses thin layers of watercolor on top of one another, a technique that is relatively new in Asian rice paper paintings. He also departs from traditional Chinese materials by using western sable watercolor brushes in addition to handmade Chinese brushes.
To create a well-defined edge in his depiction of natural objects, he occasionally uses matte medium combined with watercolor, or coats the rice paper with a matte medium, usually in a neutral shade of gray or beige. He lets this dry fully before painting over it so that the overpainting of birds, blossoms or other subjects retains a definite edge and doesn’t bleed into the base coat.
“The fact that I use layers, and coat the paper with matte medium to establish background color certainly sets me apart from traditional techniques,” he says. “However, most of my paintings retain calligraphic brushstrokes, ink blots, seals, and splashes of color or ink, all done on untreated rice paper.” These techniques, he explains, “keep me firmly in line with the ancients.”
Like the Chinese paintings that Alexander draws inspiration from, his paintings are spare and elemental, yet he succeeds in capturing the essence of his subject, whether it’s a green heron, a phoebe or a cluster of lotus blossoms. Sometimes he renders natural subjects in considerable detail, while others are more impressionistic. He calls his method “representational but abstracted.” For example, in “Plum Blossom,” a wash of pale green bleeds into a blur of rolling hills in the background. In the foreground, delicate tree branches are rendered with carefully applied ink strokes, while splotches of watercolor blur into ethereal flowers. The effect is a dreamlike blending of depths of focus that invites the viewer to step closer and also to stand back in order to fully see the painting.
Even with these combinations of modern and ancient techniques and traditions, he says, “in the final word, I remain rooted in a Taoist/Buddhist approach to painting where art is a spontaneous expression, immediate and irrevocable as life itself, where the essential truth of a painted object is the operation of the spirit (Chi) in life movement (Zheng tung).
A soft-spoken, contemplative person, Alexander says that most of his paintings don’t take much more than an hour to execute. “If you labor over it too much, you lose it,” he explains. “It’s not spontaneous anymore.” But he says he spends considerable time thinking and planning before he picks up a brush. “You wouldn’t believe how many attempts I throw away,” he says, smiling.
The show will be on view through March 15, 2019. The gallery is open Tues.-Thurs. 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Fri. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., 2nd Sat of every month 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, go to hitchcockcenter.org
Mickey Rathbun, an Amherst-based lawyer turned journalist, has written the Get Growing column since 2016.
Throughout the month of February, Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston is hosting a series of events devoted to the subject of “Healers and Killers: Plants from the Apothecary Garden.” Tower Hill’s program explores the mystical and practical powers of plants. For centuries — even millennia — people all over the world have used plants to heal the mind, body and spirit. But what heals can also be hazardous. Tower Hill’s sub-tropical conservatories will feature thousands of blooming bulbs and fantastic medicinal plant displays. From medieval remedies to accidental poisonings, its floral and apothecary displays will delve into current uses and the history and mythology of medicinal plants.
On Feb. 2 and 3 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tower Hill will host an Apothecary Marketplace, offering herbal remedies and botanical beauty products, including everything from salves and tinctures to teas and tonics, all crafted by local makers.
On Feb. 10 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. there will be a special display, Apothecary in Bloom, filled with floral displays of healing plants. Visitors can contribute to an arrangement inspired by the apothecaries of yesterday and today; all levels are welcome. The day will include floral design demonstrations, drop-in activities, and interesting floral arrangements. Cost included with admission.
Neither a healer nor a killer, the camellia is truly the queen of winter flowers and deserves our reverence. On Feb. 16, visitors can feast their eyes on Camellias in the Apothecary Garden, the annual show put on by the New England Camellia Society. Cost included with admission.
For more information about all these programs, go to towerhillbg.org
On Feb. 2 at 1 p.m., the Hadley Garden Center’s clinic will be: “Know your plants — Attract more pollinators.” These are popular and well worth attending. Free, but come early to make sure you get a seat. 285 Russell St. (Rte 9) Hadley. 584-1423