A fundamental design and life lesson from the Zen arts is to never use more when less will do. This goes for the quality of a brushstroke, the value of color and the small red seal placed at the foot of a composition to complete the work and give added meaning.
A fundamental design and life lesson from the Zen arts is to never use more when less will do. This goes for the quality of a brushstroke, the value of color and the small red seal placed at the foot of a composition to complete the work and give added meaning.
“I don’t think of myself as a Zen artist,” said Ellen Crocker, despite the fact of having a five-decade love affair with ancient Japanese arts reflecting the ideal of simplicity refined by Zen masters. “Yes, Zen is a definite influence in my life, but I am also interested in the Tao and have always said that nature is my place of worship.”
Driving up to her studio on the western slope of Mauna Loa in South Kona, the landscape affirms her love of the woods. Bold, clear lines and a nonaggressive use of color in her home, gardens and studio embody many of the tenets of the Zen aesthetic: maximum effect through minimum means. Her roots in Alabama are less apparent, but it was there at the age of 8 she first gazed upon a Sumi-e painting — a brush with destiny.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She drew neuroanatomy pen and ink images, looking at cell slides through a microscope, and became enamored by detail. Sumi-e with its steady but swift free-form brushstrokes and layers of pale gray ink counter-balanced her detail orientation.
“I bought supplies at 14, brought them to Hawaii at 21, met Sensei Koh Itoh at Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Kealakekua and painted with him for several years. We kept in touch by mail until 2006 when he passed away. Sumi-e has influenced my brush strokes, my minimalistic approach, composition, imagination and design and probably more aspects of my art than I am aware of,” she said.
In Sumi-e (“painting with ink”), modest forms created with black ink on washi (rice paper) or a silk scroll open the mind so that creativity can flow through. In “Peas in the Rain,” Crocker’s simple ink shading achieves a generous tonal range, deepening layers of the visual message that big, extraordinary shifts, even life-changing moments of peace, are also very ordinary, everyday events, like peas in the rain.
“I’m just a white girl from Alabama who likes dying art forms,” she jokes, because another of the artist’s favorite media is a Japanese form of hot wax resist and dye on fabric called roketsu-zome (rozome for short). “I love the texture and I love how dye moves, especially on silk. I have always preferred hot press watercolor paper, which is very smooth, and smooth silk. I tried to paint on canvas but did not like the texture.”
A silk-painting maestro, Crocker also works in watercolor, making intricate botanical paintings of orchids and abstracts. Sometimes she carves in birch wood to echo the connecting patterns that make a sunrise shimmer in a vermilion sky, as in “Dawn,” carved and colored with Milk Paint on a 20-by-60-inch plank of birch plywood.
At other times, she is called to echo nature’s patterns by sewing together strands of lace, buttons, yarn and tattered fabrics to make a 3-D fabric wall hanging called a Wabi Sabi (“the Japanese art of impermanence”).
Crocker, who has received awards from the Hawaii State Art Museum, the International Quilt Association and the Big Island Art Guild, is an advanced teaching partner working in Hawaii public schools since 1983. She currently leads residencies at Konawaena High and Elementary schools and teaches Sumi-e at the Society for Kona’s Education and Arts (SKEA) in Honaunau. She is also a former SKEA executive director and current member of the organization’s board of directors.
Crocker got involved with SKEA in the early ‘80s because of Teunisse Breese-Rabin, who made her aware of the lack of art in Hawaii schools.
“She was the visionary for SKEA who brought artists into the schools and it became my passion, which it still is,” she said.
Crocker’s work will be exhibited, among other artists creations, Saturday during “Da Kine Wine,” a fundraising event for SKEA. John Keawe will perform during the 5 p.m. event. Watercolor, Sumi-e paintings and quilts will be exhibited and for sale by artists Barry Blackburn, Heide Cumes, Vicki Kalman, Roz Marshall, Alice Sherer, Kim Thompson and Catherine Wynne. The fundraiser supports SKEA programs and will offer wine, pupu, coffee and desserts during live and silent auctions.