Navigating the Infinite



Louise Kikuchi was born and raised in Hawaii and has lived in Tokyo, Paris and Seattle, as well as other cities in the United States. The artist taught at Western Washington University as an Associate French professor from 1979 up to 1996.  Kikuchi had studied art since the 1960's in Hawaii and at the Sorbonne in Paris. She also studied sumi-e with Hashimoto Torin, Tokyo in the early 1980's. This was the medium that became her passion.

Sumi is a carbon based ink used as a medium in calligraphy and paintings of China, Japan and Korea. Unlike western water colors, sumi ink bonds with the paper and once painted becomes permanent. Gansai is the color version of sumi made of minerals and/or vegetables. 

Kikuchi's work in this exhibit uses the drop method of breathing through a straw or dropping the paint from a dropper unto the paper. The marks are both intentional and spontaneous, single gestures where the paper, ink, breath and the force which they all meet determines the quality of the mark, and creates a halo. There is a construct but there also is a chance. 
A few months back the Artist wrote to me describing her new work: 
"....my paintings endeavor to contrast the lived moment, where there is no beginning or end, to infinity.  For example, sometimes, when I look up into a tree, I see the sky through the leaves, sunlight glinting, and the leaves moving. These moments resonate with me and makes one feel alive, beyond time, outside of time. In a way, the dot paintings are proof of my existence. The unpainted area between the dots is infinity."

The artist is also influenced by the Polynesian Astal maps, wayfinding, without the use of an actual map but by observation and memory.  Knowing the birds, the ocean swells, the celestial night skies especially... these are the navigational tools. 


Louise Kikuchi 
2025

"The universe in which our planet is suspended has no edges. For me, this is the definition of infinity. Sometimes when I look up into a tree or look at a painting by Velasquez, for example, the moment is so intense that it has no edges either and is infinite.
My paintings pertain to this visual and emotional space. The dots in the grid are like the astral maps the Polynesians used to navigate the vast Pacific Ocean. The colors are points of reference in an infinite white field."