Het meer Kawaguchi 1937

This is Watanabe Kako’s ‘Het meer Kawaguchi’, made as a print, but I don’t know exactly when. The way the layers of colour are printed, one on top of the other, reminds me that making art is really a process of layering, not just of paint, but also of ideas and feelings. Look at how the blue of the water becomes the blue of the mountain, until it turns into the white of the snow at its peak. The colours aren’t just sitting next to each other, they’re melting into each other, mixing and morphing. It's like Kako found a way to paint air. The whole image has an ethereal quality, a dreamlike atmosphere. It reminds me of Agnes Martin’s landscapes, in that both Kako and Martin use the bare minimum of marks to suggest the maximum of feeling. Both encourage a kind of meditative looking that slowly unfolds over time. But with Kako, I am drawn to the tangible beauty of the print, and the gentle colour gradations that evoke a sense of peace and tranquility.