Lion of Kyoto
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| Sri Jack Madson
Lion of Kyoto |
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| Inspired painter, photographer, craftsman, musician and correspondent from the frontiers of consciousness, Jack Madson defined the Renaissance ideal for 3 decades of Kyoto artists and existential adventurers. His richly crafted hearth was both an intimate retreat and astonishing vantage on the breadth of the Asian world. On countless weekends, Jack presided there as beneficent mage, enthralling his friends, guests and students with an endless stream of enchanting tales, melodies, art works and inflammatory ideas. |
 1943 | Jack had come of age in the midst of WW II with converging interests in engineering design and otherworldly exploration. This led him at age 16 to work at a US Navy diving gear subcontractor where he apprenticed for a year, ran the design department at age 18, and moonlighted handcrafting his own deep dive helmet from old fire extinguishers and boiler parts. After the war, he started his own diving crew, built roadsters, and traded in his drafting pencils for the immediate gratification of the brush. He never looked back, but confronted with the Pandemonium of the art universe, he did return to school to strengthen his grasp for the long climb ahead |
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As a painter, Jack started from lush rhythmic figurative themes and gradually worked his way deeper into the energy and essence of his subjects. Shifting perspective from the dancer to the dance, he stripped away regalia, meat and architecture to reveal the vortices of light and moody grace within. He did the same with his artistic career, leaving a solid and gratifying Midwestern reputation behind to follow a dream of ancient enchantment to its lair in wild Japan. A grand poetic quest it was, but professionally, of course, it was suicide The Japanese art market of the day (and twenty years hence) was too purblind, provincial or politicized to accept unauthorized alien visionaries no matter how numinous the vision.
But Jack was always so furiously busy becoming - learning fresh arts and crafts and mantic instruments - that he never seemed to give a damn about his "real world" anonymity. He simply stripped his existence down to a sensuous haiku, and played with abandon betwixt the narrow lines. And truth be told, he was an absolutely disastrous salesman, at least of his own art - mostly because he never could handle the "own" part. Though he worked incessantly, whenever the Muse danced naked into his slender studio, he always took it more as a marvelous gift than his just deserts. And when She consented - as She so often did - to enter and illuminate his canvases, he was just so goddamned touched, that turning around and trying to sell Her to some glaze-eyed suit who could not tell Her from the wallpaper was worse than ungrateful, it was sacrilegious. But if you could see Her, and were clearly moved, Jack was so happy to share the joy that the price would go all mushy and he'd even let you hang the blessed thing upside down if that's the way She called to you. You begin to see the problem. For Jack selling a painting is sort of like trying to sell a lovers' conversation - it's so universally personal and only half yours. You can perhaps evaluate your own contributions, but how do you put a price on Her passion or replies? So the Madson signature on a painting doesn't actually mean "I did this," just "I was there, She appeared - and this is what happened." It's voyeuristic, I know, but I truly hope you too can someday sit in a quiet room with one and eavesdrop on the tryst..
In great debt & affection, |
