Atelier Talk: The Bathtub as a Sanctuary

This is my first blog this year that is not the art review / archive. Happy ending of January everyone.

A few days ago I was looking at the lunar calendar that was now marked down to half of its original price. Lunar calendar is interesting, I am always tempted to have it on my wall but looking at the moon phases closer on a lunar calendar like a map is funny, I don't know how to explain it. Maybe if you stare at them like I do you get what I mean. Ending up I haven't have a lunar calendar in my life, but still think those nicely made letterpress lunar calendars are pretty cool.

Next full moon is on February 9th, 2:33am in NYC, it is called snow moon.

Bathtub in bathroom is one of the most private spaces in my house. I think it is same to many people. What is important about this is that it makes me feel so.

Bathtub is the place in our house where it makes us feel the securest and the most private, solitude, and it is a secluded space in our house, it has that feeling... perhaps more than our own room. 

In a bathtub, our body generally assume that there is no one looking at us, we often do not even consider about eyes of others when we are in the bath. 

and we are held in the warm water, like like before we are born.

The Bath (full view), Oil on Wood panel, 12 x 6 inches, 2020

But bathtub has privacy only in these two conditions together, when we are there alone, and when we feel alone.
When we have no phone, when we are not connected to the outside, when it seems we are left out by the world that is constantly moving forward and changing, when though we do not feel loneliness in that environment because we know it is only momentary. 

Maybe bathtub is where we reveal the most relaxed ourselves, awake, if we excluded the time when we are sleeping. But it is unseen, we think. 

I like painting bathtub. It is to me like one way of connecting the inside and outside. 

Private space to communal space... and inside the water and air.

It is, in real life, very difficult to do so , to see this state of somebody or to show this state to somebody, because we reveal our unguarded vulnerable selves because of the sense of isolation from the rest of the world. I think it is only possible in art, in painting. 

The Bath (side view), Oil on Wood panel, 12 x 6 x1 inches, 2020

I am happy that I finally finished this small painting. 

For a while, it was left on wall almost finished but it was never finished, and it was different from how it looks now. 

By the way, this is nothing to do with the bathtub, but I have been thinking to change my hair for a white, but when I have set myself a rule to keep the long hair it can be difficult. Cutting hair short is easy for a dramatic change. Adding partial vivid pink and or blond has been in my mind, but maybe when I go back to my Japan next time, I will get a permanent again. It came to my mond to talk about it because I dye my hair in bathroom. 

Spring is coming. I heard from a physician that cooling body helps the pain, while warming body helps the healing. I think it is true. Body should heal faster in the spouting season than in the winter. 

How about our heart then?