After years of “wishing” I could paint but believing I couldn’t, I finally tried.
In 2013, I painted a strawberry…one single…large strawberry. I had trained as a woodworker, and transitioning from fabricating three-dimensional objects to painting the illusion of three dimensions on canvas was challenging. How am I going to sink each of these strawberry seeds into its individual crater? I fell back on words my mentor once told me. “If you can see it, you can do it. Some people, he continued, can not see it.” This has become my mantra, reminding me whenever I “can’t get it” to open my eyes and look at the subject, the light, and the shadows…then look again.
Since then, I have participated in group shows in Kansai, and in September 2022, I had my first solo exhibition at Honen-in Temple in Kyoto. I continue as a self-taught painter, but now, with the benefit of having accomplished artist friends, I can call on when I have strawberry seed problems.
Charles Roche
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