Adam Booth

Adam Booth is a British painter living in Japan.

We sat down and talked about Hokusai, the story of Kachi Kachi, and how expensive it is to paint on silk with gold.





Chief Magazine: So how does a guy from Worcestire, England, end up in the middle of Tokyo studying ancient painting?

Adam Booth: I studied Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, in the UK, at the University of East Anglia. They have a World Arts center, which is where I studied.  While I was studying there I met some Japanese, and they were... well, they were interesting, and I went to an exhibition in London of Rinpa.

What's Rinpa?

It's a school of Japanese painting. Quite decorative; it's what you think of when you think of classical Japanese painting, like Ogata Korin's folding screens, with plum trees, red and white, gold backgrounds, quite flat.  Anyway, something like that.

And when you saw that show, you decided to paint?

I saw those pictures and become more and more interested in the composition, color, and line of Japanese art.  No, yeah, I'd already graduated from fine arts school in painting, but at that point it was an academic course, ‘cause I wanted to get broader, a broader mind for world art, so it was anthropology, art history, and some archaeology.  So we were looking at odd stuff, Incan, Mayan, Aztec and, well, I was particularly interested in South American stuff as I'd traveled there, really loved all that. Still really influenced by it.  But really, all this, I was looking for some way of painting or making art that suited my ideas.

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What got you into art in the first place?

Art? I couldn't say, always been into art.  My father traveled quite a bit around Europe and stuff, so I traveled with him.  I wanted to travel on my own, so when I was 19 I went to Mexico for a trip by myself.

How long were you there?

Only about a month.  I saved up the money and went, and I suppose that was a start for my love of traveling and other cultures.

Did you know anyone?

No, I just went. Just decided to go.  [Laughs] I went around, backpacking, I don't know how I got about, really, just like anyone, you know, you just do it.

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And so was that a precursor for when you went to the rainforest?

Well, I went back to school, and then the opportunity came up to go. [Pause] And I went.

I'm sorry, where, I mean, which rainforest? And what did you do?

Oh, Peru.  You get free board and lodging but you have to guide tourists. [Laughs] It's not such a great setup.

So you don't know that much, and then you go ahead and try and explain that to other people?

The first weeks they took us out and taught us about the rainforest, and then after that we were on our own.

How did it feel, the very first time you walked out into the rainforest, any beautiful memories?

Oh, yes! Rain. It chucked it down.

Chucked it down.

Yeah, you know, the other people were used to it, but it was dry when we went out and then it just started to RAIN, and the other people, they were fine, but I was like, how long is this gonna last and how much stronger is it gonna get!? [Laughs] But it was cool...and we saw an animal, some kind of raccoon kind of thing, and the sounds! The sounds of the rainforest, it's a very special environment.

Like a different world, I imagine.

Yes, you get...you get lost in it. It's quite scary, I mean you feel like, if you go off the track...well you do. If you go off the track, it's very, very easy to get lost.  And you get a real sense of being in nature, and it was really good for opening your eyes and ears.  The tourists, they all want to see animals and birds, so you have to listen for that.  You know, in downtown Tokyo, you shut out so much, you just take what you need, but there you had to listen to everything.

How long were you there for?

Three months. And then I got some sort of virus.

You didn't get a bug in you, did you?! ‘Cause my friend, once, he came back from somewhere and his girlfriend was giving him a back massage, when she found this hole in his back with a giant bug in it.

No, not a bug! A virus. There are some horrible bugs there, though. Yeah, some burrow into the skin and lay their eggs in you, and then they pop back out again.  My cousin's boyfriend got a bug in his balls when he came to the rainforest.

No! No...

Yes.  And apparently they used raw meat to try and coax it out, because it will transfer if it senses a better home.  So they were wiping his balls with raw meat...I was pretty careful then [Laughs].

Wiping with steak... wow...

Yeah, the rainforest--it's a dangerous place. We went out looking for a, what do you call it, a jaguar, is that what it was? Yes, a jaguar, and it had come near to where we were staying and we saw some footprints.  So we went out at night to look for it ---but there were only about 4 or 5 of us --and we went out with our torches, and I was like at the back, you know, and [laughing] thinking maybe you know...this is real nature, you know, a real wildcat, and he picks off the back...so that's me, you know!

[Laughs] What did you do then?

Oh, I said to the guys, maybe this isn't such a good idea, and we went back pretty quick after that.

So all this rainforest stuff you saw, does that show up in your work? I remember thinking the feathers of your birds look sort of like fantastic plants...

Well, yes and no, I mean, I think it does--how can I say--because it stretches the brink of your imagination. Like, I want to extend things beyond what we expect, beyond preconceived ideas. People tend to think of things as set models, and I dislike that. So yeah, in the rainforest, you see insects that are unbelievable, THIS big, y’know? And you see plants that are huge and weird shapes and colors and sizes—

Things that if you saw them in a movie or cartoon, you wouldn't believe...

Yeah, you'd just say oh, that's not real. But it is real, and birds that are fantastic, weird creatures...so that element comes into it.

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During one of your talks, you showed a pretty wide knowledge of Japanese traditional stories as well as Western ones, and you often mix them together...

Yeah, I mean, trying to look at as many different things as I can.  And in that way, you break people's preconceived ideas, and you extend their viewpoints, and the way they see the world.  I've become very aware of how culture kind of sets you, and if you've never been abroad, how completely it is your entire world, and you see… the way you see the world is completely through your culture.  And when you've traveled a bit, that starts to open up. So yeah... my work's trying to be about saying, it doesn't have to be like this, it could be like this, this may not be normal. That might be normal.

It's interesting that you’ve come to Japan, a very nationalistic society, where most Japanese feel like they are part of the Japanese family, and are not particularly inviting to Westerners.

Yeah, perhaps that's why... I mean, I have to do it even more here, push boundaries... it's difficult, because there is that, that kind of... they are very narrow... narrow-minded. [Pauses] And they are very set in their culture. But they're interested people, they're very keen.  They are keen on The Other. [Laughs] That's the other problem, too, though, they call us “The Other” - it's very much them and us.

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They do seem to always have questions for you, trying to find out more from you.

Yes, well, I'm not interested in being a political artist or anything, but if they ask me-- if I can make them think a bit, then that's really good.

Along those lines, as a tall blue-eyed Brit, how do you think the Japanese see you? Any negative reaction?

No, I've been surprised at how easy it is, actually. Very little, I mean, no, no negativity.  I am on my own though. They have, they have certain shows where all the Japanese tend to exhibit in those, the academy shows. And those are very much - you have your senpai, your elders, who control the whole thing, and they decide who can exhibit and who can't, and everything's ranked.  

I haven't tried to go into that world because it doesn't interest me. I'm much more--I'm trying to angle out of the traditional Nihon market.  It's been beneficial actually, that I'm a foreigner, I have more freedom, and they don't tend to expect me to work in that way.  I mean, it gives you a name and so on, but it's a bit conservative... I'm happy with the freedom I have. [Pause] And I've found, as I progress, they accept me more, as sort of an offshoot I guess. [Laughs]

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Maybe that explains the modern elements that sometimes make it into your work - the broken keyboards in "Subjective" [above], the little girl's Mary Jane shoes in... in... what was the name of that painting?

Oh, it has a long title, um... let's see... "Morning Glory”, what was it?... "Morning Glory, White Hummingbird and her Shoes,” or something like that, I've forgotten it. [Laughs]

Basically, the backdrop to my work is this imagined paradise, utopia, Garden of Eden, which comes about from looking at Japanese screens, they always picture these beautiful landscapes with the four seasons and so on, and I use that as a basis for many - not all - but many of my paintings.  So I want to create this feeling of a slight chaos, or twist within that world, so when people are looking at it, they first see this beautiful utopia, but then they realize there is something wrong. Not quite right. And so there are bits of modern-day garbage or technology.  It's a way to say, what you think is nice and perfect, may not be. And maybe we should be a bit more careful about how we shape the world.

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What about your main elements: the white elephants, peaches and the exotic birds, what are those about?

It started with the white elephants.  I went to Kyoto and saw on these huge doors, part of a temple, these enormous elephants that just took up the entire space, with just white and line, and it had a huge impression on me... would you like to see? [We nod, he shuffles around some paper] Here it is...

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Wow, it looks so modern.

Yeah, it does, it's 400 years old, and yet it's modern, and it's powerful, and it 100 percent says elephant, but then it's not all really, it's kind of deformed, it just happens to have a long nose... so I had just come to Japan, and was getting used to the materials, and this was a starting point, thinking, I'm going to see how I can stretch this one idea, to express an elephant, how much can I block out of what I already know about them, and in the UK, there's very few, it's quite rare to see an elephant picture, and when you do, it's rather realistic and, you know, gray, and so this white elephant was new to me, fresh, even though it's so old! [Laughs] And then I found in Thailand, there are white elephants -

[Overexcited] Real white elephants?!

No. They're not completely white, they have white speckles...but that's what's interesting, translated into painting, it can be completely white, you can change anything in a painting, it doesn't need to be a close representation in order to represent it.  And with the elephant, I am always changing reality with it, changing how it is being represented.

And the peaches?

Peaches are mostly found in Chinese art rather than Japanese, but they have filtered in to Japanese culture, they have the story of Momotaro--

Oh, right, where he is born out of a giant peach? And then he befriends a monkey and some other animals when he goes to destroy a bunch of demons?

Yeah, it's a bit of a bizarre story.  There's all these connotations to the peach, it has that erotic feel to it, it's juicy, it looks beautiful, it has this kind of delicate thing going on... it's a very attractive object, and yet delicate.  There's this Chinese story called To Gen Kyo about a paradise garden with a lot of peach trees, and a young boy who is from a poor village, lots of crime, goes out on the river and one day he finds the garden, and he has a wonderful time eating as much as he wants, but the garden people tell him that, of course, he can't tell anyone, and, of course, he goes home and tells everyone.

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Wouldn't really make a good story otherwise.

Right. And they all want to go of course, but they can't find it, the garden is gone. It, it translates as having become separated from that world.  So that, that was really interesting, it's somewhere you want to go but you can't get there; the peaches become a symbol for somewhere you want to go or something that you want, but can't get. The same as longevity in all the stories, people want it, want immortality, but they usually find out they can't get it, or they have some experience where they realize that being immortal, it's not that great anyway. I find that particularly interesting, you desire something, you want something, you aim for something, but either you can't get it, or if you do get it, it might not be what you want.

And the exotic birds? Correct me if I'm wrong, but they seem to be a step down in importance to the elephants and peaches, even though there are a bunch in--  

Yeah, they are.

Oh, okay.

Well, no they're not.

Oh.

Well, um, I wanted another element, and birds have such amazing expressions in Japanese paintings, and I love that, I love their expressions, like Hokusai's birds.  Their eyes are really looking up, at flowers or whatever, and you really wonder what they're thinking--I did a painting of a Japanese crane, but looking at a light bulb instead of the normal flowers and so on, and he's like, “What the...?” You know, all these questions come up.  You wonder if he gets it all, does he see a star-like light, does he comprehend... but the three together, the elephants and peaches and birds, it's a nice contrast, it's a nice set.  They create a dialogue.

You mention Hokusai [super famous Japanese artist--you know, the waves], do you look at those older Japanese artists a lot?

I look at as much artwork as I can.  I am attracted to older Japanese works, but I actually wasn't that keen on Hokusai at first--he'd been so hyped up.

You just went “mainstream band” on Hokusai! Like, if he's that popular, he can't be any good.

Yeah, I admit it, I did! I just put him to one side.  But the other day, well, no, a while back, I did finally realize he was actually pretty interesting, he did things other people didn't do, but I can't really choose anyone... I can't say... I mean I love the elephant guy, Sotatsu, but I like different artists for different reasons.

You seem like, like your art philosophy is you want to see as much as you can, so you can channel it through yourself.

Yeah, that's what I want to do... dragging in as many different ideas... yeah.

What about contemporary artists? Any that draw you in particular?

Well, contemporary culture filters in, being in Tokyo.

Pop, and anime?

Yeah, you see manga-esque art quite a bit... so that filters in, but it's in all Japanese art, and that's maybe why that comes out in mine some as well, but no, there's no Japanese artist at the moment that has a strong impression on me.

When I first saw your work, I thought, some of your creatures are really... really... frickin’... cute.

[Laughs wryly]

And when I see old Japanese painting, I don't think of those animals as cute, and I wondered if you were intentionally commenting on the current Japanese obsession with cute.

It's a difficult area, ‘cause there's so much cute in Japan, and...yeah.  I think you can use cuteness to draw the Japanese in. [Laughs] They're attracted to cute.  I suppose I am aiming for a bit of cuteness, but I try not to make it simply cute.

Draw them in, like a Venus Flytrap?

I try to keep a sort of sinister feel to it.  I find if, the work is grotesque, people are off put. I'm trying to attract people, but when I've got them captured, I want them to think, examine a little more.

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What about “Kachi Kachi?”  You painted a rabbit-elephant creature holding fire, what's his backstory?

Oh, how does it start again... it's quite a long story and I might have to do more with it...

There's a woodcutter, and he captures a tanuki, a sort of magical raccoon in Japanese legend, that along with foxes are known as troublemakers, they can change shape and so on--and one has been messing with his crops, so he captures it and hangs it up alive in his house, intending to have it for his dinner, and he says to his wife, well, that's what we're gonna have for dinner, and then off he goes. And the tanuki charms his wife, saying oh, it hurts so much being tied up, let me help you with the cooking.  So she lets him out, and he kills her and cooks her.

What?! Oh, shit!

Yeah, so he cooks her, and dresses up in her clothes, and when the woodcutter comes back, he eats his own wife.

That is messed up.

[Laughs] Yeah, and then the tanuki calls him a cannibal and disappears. And then there's a rabbit who hears about this, and feels bad for the woodcutter.

I feel bad for him too.

Yeah, and he invites him to gather wood together.

Who does what?

The rabbit invites the tanuki to gather wood together, and the way they gather wood is on their backs.  So the tanuki is up ahead on the mountain, and the rabbit sets fire to the wood on his back.  And that's the name, the sound of fire is 'kachi kachi', and the rabbit tells him, don't worry, this is Kachi Kachi Mountain, you can always hear that sound.  So the tanuki continues, but soon he's, well, he's on fire, and badly burned.  So he goes home crying.  And the rabbit comes over to say sorry, and to offer him some salve to help his back.  But actually, it's hot chili pepper sauce. Which burns him even more, of course.

This is a children's story?

And then later still, they have a race, and the rabbit makes his boat of wood, and offers to make him one, but the tanuki makes his own, of clay.  And the clay melts, and he starts to sink, and the rabbit is nearby, and he bashes him on the head with an oar, and he dies.

Damn.

[Laughs] It's a really horrible story. Torture, cannibalism, fire...

And the moral of this story is…?

Oh, I don't know!

In your painting, though, the rabbit has an elephant truck, and there's a peach.

Yeah, he's setting fire to a peach... the story's just a starting point. I'm not interested in illustrating a story.

Even one as morally upstanding as “Kachi Kachi.”

I've been interested in myth for a long time, so I try to read about the Japanese legends.

When there are story elements in your paintings, it never is the whole thing.

I'm interested in having the work appear to have a dialogue, but not actually. Not have it fixed.  I deliberately want it to look like there's a story behind it, but there, there isn't really. I just want to create the possibility.

Kind of frustrating, for the Japanese, huh? They like things orderly, to be able to place things, and they can't do that with your work.

I know, yeah... they give names to my creatures, and they want to know, well, what is it? Is it a rabbit or is it an elephant? I don't know! [Laughs] Neither. But that's part of the fun.

I was gonna ask you what the strangest story you've painted about is, but I guess that would be “Kachi Kachi.”

Yeah, maybe so.

What about the skull guy painting?

That one... I did that one quite differently, I usually do all my compositions first, but I've been looking to change that, because recently I've felt my work has been getting constrained by the processes. So when I did that picture, I experimented more, and it was more natural... I wanted that elephant, rolling on his back...and I had gone to Tibet a year or two ago, so that's in there... and the South American side, I'm very interested in early cultures, mask and dancing, and that's still very evident in Tibet today, so yeah, that's where the skeleton dancing comes in... and it's quite a mixture, ‘cause also there's a crow in the corner, from China, a three-legged crow--which is on the Japanese football top.

Football? Oh, soccer.

Yes, sorry, soccer. The Japanese soccer team has a black badge with a three-legged crow. His name is Yata-garasu, which is a bit confusing, because it's written as Eight Leg Crow, but really, the eight here doesn't mean eight, it means many, so yeah... eight equals many which in this case equals three.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, and I also thought of Aesop's Fables, and so I gave him peacock feathers as a tail, so it's quite a bizarre mixture, I guess! That picture especially, more of an experiment, to see how it work.

So, some of the detail, like this gold fabric stuff, and the feathers, is really small and fine-- do you just stay in this studio for hours without leaving?

Yes. [Laughs]  I'm not actually someone that is that into detail. I don't overly want to paint detail. But right now, I'm looking for that Japanese image, and some of the older Japanese art, especially the Buddhist pictures, for example, had some amazing refinery of clothes - they were very big on pattern--and I want to keep that traditional, nihongo feel to it. But I'm also interested in creating contrasts and extremes, so there are places that are painted quite thinly or even just sketchy, visible pencil lines, and then maybe just one part of clothing that's really painted well, detailed.

So instead of a painting that's easily one thing or another, I want variety... it's... so if someone is drawn to, if detailed work appeals to them, they have to deal with the fact that there's undetailed areas. I've had people before ask me, that picture there, is that finished? And I've gone, yes, you know, yes it is. [Laughs]

Buddhist pictures have a lot of gold and refinery, and it creates this sort of ethereal--like someone coming down from the heavens. I wanted to create that feeling with this character [pointing to a painting behind him with a small flying elephant creature wearing a gold patterned robe], so it was important to do the detail.

Is there any significance to your figures that are painted as sort of white outlines?

I don't really know where it comes from, just again... different ways of painting within a single picture. The backgrounds are random, well a controlled random, I let the paint settle naturally, bleed... and then you've got, like the cloud, which is controlled, the face, more controlled, and then there's line bits and solid bits, yeah, it's about variety, creating variety.  There's some parts that are slightly three-dimensional, others are totally flat.  There's lot of detail in the clothing, but actually there's no form to it at all. I enjoy that. It's something that you can do in painting that you can't do as easily in other media -

Right, you can mix--

You can actually completely mix worlds.

And yet keep it feeling as one piece.

Yes, it's important to me that it does have a complete… that it feels like one picture.

So this gold here, is that just a metallic paint?

Well, one of the reasons I like the materials of Japanese painting is that there are so many.  There's gold leaf, which I've used before, and there's also ground gold.

Straight up, real, crushed gold?

Literally that. Which I've used, but I mixed it with artificial gold--I don't know what they make it from, mica or something.  The real gold is--is different, it looks much more beautiful, and it paints differently, it goes on so smoothly...

Painting with real gold...

Yeah, when you start Japanese painting, you think this is ridiculous, this is a joke, it's just too expensive! I'm painting with minerals, I mean really, really precious stones, I mean, I'm using gold, the paper costs a fortune, the silk I paint on costs a fortune, the brushes are expensive, everything is expensive!

How--

I'm lucky that I paint thinly, some of the Japanese, they paint heavily and that's much more, that becomes very expensive.

How are you supporting this?

[Laughs] Well, I have my scholarship which I spread out, and when I sell work, I put that back in, and yeah, I make do. It does cost a lot of money, but I make it stretch with my thin painting.

Good thing that's your style then. If you had some Van Gogh-like ideas about your gold you'd be seriously broke.

Or like, what's his name, De Kooning... painting over it all the time.  

The other thing about the gold is the light. I'm interested in using the space around the painting as well, how to use the whole environment. And that's the nice thing about gold, it changes in different lighting, it's an interesting area to experiment with... and there's silver and platinum and zinc and copper. Some of the old Japanese screens change, get darker, because of the silver oxidizes. It's a different surface, the texture of Japanese painting, the texture is interesting, it's not shiny like acrylic or oil, so the gold really stands out.

Also that you're using silk, doesn't that change how it paints?

Yes. The problem with silk is - well, there's a primer for it, same as paper, that prevents it from spreading too much-- but it's bad for the silk, so you have to try to keep it weak, thin--but it was frustrating in the beginning, I definitely had failure in the beginning. But the preparing of the silk, the stretching it and backing it that is the most difficult.

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What about the fire in your work?

Yeah, there's quite a bit of it now, it's becoming more important.  Well, there's a lot of fire in Buddhist art, and originally, I thought of it as symbolizing the allure of the peach. Fire's attractive, you are allured to it, but if you touch it you get burned. So it was that kind of idea that I wanted for the peaches - you want them, but they're not, they're for the gods or - well, they're not for you. [Laughs]

Kind of like in "Peach Tree", the white elephant is holding up the peach tree and he wants what he is supporting but he can't get it because he's holding it up, and that is flanked by the two smaller paintings of peaches on fire.

Right, exactly.

My Japanese friend, actually, saw that painting and I was saying it was sad, and she just thought it was cute.

Hmm, yeah. That's not really it.  Well...i t's not an easy process, to change how people look at art, but I do get very encouraging comments from people.  Some people tell me what it's all about, and that's great, I love that, you know - when they say, oh, he's doing that, and this means that, and so on. That's fantastic.

What about the shirts you designed with a well-known Japanese designer? Tell us about that.

I approached a design company, well, a company looked at my site through a connection.  And there's a very famous designer in Japan, Takeo Kikuchi, who has two different brands, and TK Takeo Kikuchi is like a younger person's brand and they do collaborations with people from time to time.  They saw my work and thought it would be good for a collaboration, and I made five images based on my paintings.

You made new designs for them?

Yes and no, I wanted to express one painting with each shirt, so I designed each one for a shirt, but the paintings already existed. But I've been making those designs for awhile now, so I want to create some new ones.

Cool! Can't wait to see them.

Thanks.

So as a last question, can you tell me about a time when your life was danger?

Oh, once when I went to the Galapagos Islands, my boat started to sink at 4am.

Sink? Boat?

Yeah, we took the cheapest tour.

You most certainly did.

Actually, I think it was sinking when we got in it! It was a sort of half-reformed fishing vessel, and a max of ten people... and there were fifteen of us. And it had cockroaches, and when you slept the engine was like there [gestures to right beside his head]. It was horrific, but it's expensive down there, and we just got the cheapest we could.  And we went around the islands like that, and then one morning, 4am, I was woken up, and I thought we were on fire actually. But no, there was water coming in and we were just sinking. And we had come from Ecuador, and we were in the middle of the big, big ocean.  And there were sharks I believe. [Pause] It was scary.

One would think! How did you get out of that?

We waited a few hours on the deck--it was drizzling rain. And we set off a flare, and eventually another boat came and we were able to fix the hose that was broken, pumped out the water, and eventually, in the morning, we were able to make it to the nearest island.  And then it was this whole ordeal, ‘cause we were like, we're not getting back on that piece of shit!

No kidding!

Yeah, and the guy, he was just full of rubbish; he said he'd get a different boat, and then he didn't come back.

So he just left you there?

Well, there were fifteen of us, and in the end, we eventually hitched a ride with a Dutch catamaran--

Wow, fancy.

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Yeah, it was luxurious. It was really funny ‘cause we had just nearly died, and we were just, you know, stinking from being in this terrible, cockroach infested boat, in our wet T-shirts, smelly - and all these Dutch people, sitting around on this catamaran, with these long tables, and melon and soup and waiters, and we got on the back of their boat, and after they were done, after they finished their dinners, we were invited in, and then the waiters served us! It was strange...

Website

www.adambooth.com

Photos

Scean Mitchell

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