Dear Art Lover,

It’s a great week for art.  This weekend I joined a few others for a visit to the Seattle Art Museum, their first time and my second seeing the exhibit “Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence”, traveling from the MFA in Boston.  Previously I’d seen the exhibit this summer on my final day in Boston, and felt moved to create a section of my website acknowledging the effect this artist (Katsushika Hokusai, 1760-1849) and his contemporaries have had on my work.  At the Seattle Art Museum, it was wonderful to make art introductions to people less familiar with Japanese woodblock printing, to witness them seeing these extraordinary artworks for the first time.

The show runs until January 21, 2024.  It is, simply put, one of the best museum exhibits I’ve ever seen.  One pleasure of seeing the exhibit a second time in a new city (especially my home city) was the apparent change of some of the work for other work, or auxiliary pieces.  I am almost certain that the works on display are not the same identical catalog I saw in Boston, so the discovery of new treasures within the exhibit was exhilarating.

If you are looking to attend a show opening, this Thursday, November 9, from 6:30-8pm is the opening for the Animal Art exhibit at Gallery B612.  I have several pieces in the show, really fun drawings made from pure imagination, and inspired, in part, by the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) one of Hokusai’s contemporaries.  Also I’m happy to share that my friend and fellow artist James Wallace Repton, who specializes in animal art, has several pieces in the show as well, making this his first show!  I hope he’s able to make the opening, Thursday, November 9, 6:30-8pm.

Cheers,

David