Every April, two million people walk this exact path. They are heading to Kiyomizu-dera, phones up, looking for the gate everyone photographs. I turned around and painted what they walked through to get there.
Charlotte said it lacks distinctive features. She is right. That is the point.
The weather does more work than the temple
The famous view is the temple gate with the cherry trees framing it. I have painted that gate fourteen times and discarded thirteen of them. The fourteenth I kept, but I do not like it as much as this one.
This piece is the path to the gate, in rain, at the hour when the tour groups have left and the stone is dark and wet. One umbrella, pink petals stuck to grey stone, the lanterns not yet lit. If you have been to Kyoto in April you have stood here, but you do not have a photograph of it.
The knife work is heavier than usual. I wanted the rain to sit on the surface, not soak into it. Petals Falling Through Glass has more texture than anything else in the Lantern Path series – you can see it in the canvas print, feel it if you run a finger near the edge.
I painted it in the wrong season
I made this in November. The maple was out, not the cherry. I painted from memory and from four years of April photographs I took standing in this exact spot, waiting for the light to turn grey enough.
Valentina called it immersive. Ruby called the composition balanced. Both of them are looking at a picture I made six months away from the thing it shows, which means the memory did the work the cherry blossoms usually do.
One street, twenty-three paintings
I have painted Ninenzaka twenty-three times. Kiyomizu-dera is at the top. Everyone photographs the gate. I keep painting the two hundred metres before you get there – the part where your shoes are wet, the lanterns are just coming on, and you can still hear the rain.
This is the first one where I left the gate out completely. It is canvas only, landscape, knife-heavy. The umbrella is six brushstrokes, the petals are three, and the rest is weather.
For: Someone who has been to Kyoto, or wants to, and knows that the best part of the famous place is the twenty minutes before you reach it.
Not for: Anyone who wants the postcard – the gate, the peak bloom, the view everyone else has.
See Petals Falling Through Glass →
Gallery-wrapped canvas, in 3 sizes — 16×12, 24×18, 32×24 in. Ships free within the continental US.
