Great White Egret
2024
Woodcut
ENQUIRE
A tribute to Kawanabe Kyosai.
A few weeks ago, a Great White Egret spent some time in the corner of Spiggie Loch in Shetland where it was in a near constant duel with the highly territorial heron that also favours this prime fishing spot. Around the same time i came across a beautiful delicate sumi ink drawing of an egret by Japanese Printmaker Kawanabe Kyosai, that was worked on over a period of 18 years. The seemingly easy found simplicity of this masterful composition clearly did not come overnight and I recognised a kindred spirit, in an artist that spends time looking and learning from nature, but who does not draw the surface but who instead goes in search of the essential essence that lays below the surface.