Butterflies 1934

Fujishima Takeji made this artwork, Butterflies, with ink on paper. Those dark fluttery marks are so suggestive, aren't they? I can almost feel the artist trying to catch the fleeting nature of a butterfly. It’s like a memory of a butterfly, rather than a portrait. Maybe he was thinking about the way they transform – from caterpillar to chrysalis to winged wonder. I wonder about his hand holding the brush, gently coaxing these shapes into being. See how the ink bleeds softly into the paper? That's a lot like how thoughts sort of dissolve and reform when I’m painting. It's not about control, it's about letting the medium do its thing. Maybe these butterflies flitted across the silk scroll paintings he must have seen. All painters are magpies, borrowing and transforming as they go!