Derived from traditional Chinese black-ink painting and calligraphy, sumi-e has been practiced in Japan for more than 800 years. As adopted by early Buddhist monks, it involves nothing more than black ink, water, rice paper and brushes, but at its highest levels requires strict discipline, mindfulness and tranquility.
Sumi-e is not, in other words, an art form for the tentative or self-conscious.
“Once you put the ink on the paper, that’s it,” said sumi-e artist and teacher Hisae Shouse. “You can’t cheat or cover it up. Once the brush stroke is made, that’s it. That’s what I like about it. It suits my personality.”
Shouse has been teaching sumi-e in various capacities and at numerous venues around Oahu for nearly the last 20 years. She typically works with small groups, providing instruction in basic brush strokes that serve as a foundation not just for artistic growth but, just the earliest practitioners intended, personal reflection and meditation.
“I enjoy the moment when they suddenly get it,” Shouse said. “We can’t move on to the next step until that happens. Even if it’s a small thing, when they say, ‘Ah, I see,’ that gives me a lot of pleasure.”
Shouse grew up in Japan’s Yamaguchi prefecture in a home that cultivated her aesthetic sensibilities. Her mother was a renowned teacher of ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement). Her father owned a concession business and had a deep appreciation for music.
As a child, Shouse gravitated toward manga, finding her earliest means of artistic expression in the stylized comic form.
By the time she finished high school, Shouse had experimented in all manner of drawing and painting media and had settled on oil painting, which she focused on while earning a bachelor’s degree in fine art from the Women’s College of Fine Arts in Tokyo.
But while she appreciated the unique characteristics of the medium, Shouse couldn’t ignore one odious truth.
“I realized that oil painting stinks,” Shouse said, chuckling. “The paints smell so strongly I couldn’t stand being in the same room. I also didn’t have the patience to wait for the media to dry.”
Curious about other art forms, Shouse heard about Master Kunpuu Ito, a master sumi-e artist from Kyoto, and began taking classes from him. Her apprenticeship lasted two years, after which she set out to find work, eventually returning to her hometown, where she worked as an art teacher at a junior high school.
Around this time, Shouse met a nice U.S. Marine named Jeff at a Christmas party. They married in 1988 and moved to Massachusetts a couple of years later.
Shouse continued her artistic pursuits in her new home, finding joy and inspiration in the change of seasons. While in Boston, she taught art at a local community college and exhibited her own work at a local gallery.
After another stint in Japan, the couple moved to Hawaii in 1996, this time with a young daughter, Mai, in tow. Over the years, Shouse has taught art at Hongwanji Mission School, exhibited and sold original works through the Windward Artists Guild, taught art classes at Windward Community College, and offered sumi-e courses and exhibitions through Temari, Nichiren Mission of Hawaii, Byodo-In Temple and other venues.
Shouse, who credits her husband and daughter with supporting her artistic endeavors, wryly calls herself a “housewife artist” whose art-related income adds up to less than a living wage.
Yet, as the cliche goes, Shouse practices her art not for a living but for a life, the value of which can only be intuited by the artist herself.
Shouse is ever open to new experiences — she enjoys karaoke and ballroom dancing — yet she finds herself continually drawn back to her art. In sumi-e, she continues to find new shades of possibility, new insights, a continued progress toward an undefinable terminus of perfection.
And she finds hope for a kind of perpetuity.
“The environment around me changes but I keep going with my art,” she says. “All of these good things that have happened to me have happened because I’ve kept going. Hopefully some of my students will continue to carry this spirit.”
For more information about sumi-e classes, e-mail sumieinparadise@gmail.com or call 382-0236.
