Julie Podstolski – Abstract Realism | A site to share my drawings, paintings, photographs and thoughts.

Gion Night

Electric lights, illuminated signage and red Japanese lanterns glowing from a Gion Higashi side-street, together create a nocturnal abstract.

“Gion Night” (above) is my third consecutive drawing of soft-focus Kyoto. “Gion Night” is the most abstract of the three, but if you know the idea began with a side-street or alley-way, you can kind of see it.

The previous two drawings are “Alone in Kyoto” and “Downtown“.

“Alone in Kyoto” Neocolor II and coloured pencils. 23.5 x 28.5 cm. April 2024.

“Alone in Kyoto” (above) was drawn after “Downtown” (below). Each drawing is more pared back than the previous one, with incrementally decreasing detail.

“Downtown” Neocolor II and coloured pencils. 30 x 21 cm, drawn in March 2024.

These three drawings have been questioning, challenging, frustrating and fulfilling in turn for me as I have sought out an impressionistic essence of evening Kyoto.

Alone in Kyoto

Last time I traveled to Kyoto I was not in a good mood during my first evening there. No doubt I was worn out from lack of sleep and two long-haul flights. I felt that I had made a mistake in coming back. I trudged around for a while in a black mood then gave up on finding inspiration and returned to my hotel room.

Looking back at my (very few) photo images from that first evening, I wondered if I could communicate my sense of doubt in a drawing. In my journal I had written “worst first night ever“, and that I was fluctuating between despair and resignation.

Well, there can be a kind of dark beauty in introspection – perhaps.

Downtown

On my way to Lawson to buy takeaway dinner one evening in Kyoto, a marching band of lights caught my attention. It was headed up by blue fairy lights. A Japanese lantern fell in behind. To the rear, neon signs and street lamps formed an abstract cohort, dazzling and reflecting all the way down to Shijo-dori. What a colourful cacophony. I thought there might be a drawing in it so I took a few photos.

This is the source photo for the drawing “Downtown”.

During the last fortnight as I worked on my drawing, Petula Clark’s song “Downtown” (1964) popped into my head. The song begins…

When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go downtown
When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtown

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

So go downtown
Things will be great when you're downtown
No finer place for sure, downtown
Everything's waiting for you.

Kyoto Twilight

It was November 2005. Having used a film camera for decades, this was my first trip to Japan with a digital camera…a Nikon D70 if I remember correctly.

I wandered around Pontocho in Kyoto just as the light was morphing from daylight into evening – which is my favourite time. Lanterns and neon lights were popping on as the sky, not to be outdone, radiated its own quiet glow. I captured the moment with my new camera.

Back in 2006 I used the same source photo for another drawing which I called “Illuminating Dusk”. Because I have always loved this composition, I wanted to have another go at it in 2024.

The main lantern, incidentally, has been gone for years so if you go to Kyoto you will never see this scene. I suppose that makes this drawing a little bit of history.

“Illuminating Dusk”, coloured pencils, 36 x 55.5 cm. Drawn in 2006.

My friend, Hiroo Inoue, explained about the lantern in a letter in 2006 after I showed him the drawing I’d made. He wrote, “The kanji letters say DAI TOMI RYO, literal meaning is Great Wealth Ryo Ryo. This has various meanings like monetary unit in olden times and it also means “both”. Probably Dai Tomi Ryo is the name of a Japanese restaurant. During summer time those Japanese restaurants along side of Kamogawa river, they stretch verandahs over the river. They place mats on the extended verandahs where you enjoy the sound of river flow, also enjoy Japanese dishes. Dai Tomi Ryo can offer such services during summer season”.

Rest in Peace, Hiroo-san.

Afterword: A friend commented that she thought I was brave to work twice from the same photo. I explained it this way; I saw Kyoto with fresh wide-open eyes in my early trips so I photographed things I wouldn’t even “see” when I became more familiar with the place. Now I see these early images as treasure. I bring an evolved pencil technique to the old compositions which make the finished new drawings completely different to the original drawings.

Pontocho Perfect

Pontocho, a narrow lane in downtown Kyoto, reminds me of a Venetian calle. It has the same kind of intimate claustrophobic walking space as that of a calle – squished between buildings – a tight fit. You may enter Pontocho from either Shijo Street at its southern end or Sanjo Street at its north. As soon as you turn into Pontocho you enter another world.

Pontocho is known and loved for its lively atmosphere, enormous variety of bars and restaurants – mmmm – the aromas as you pass by them! When it is quiet though, that is when you feel the spirit (and spirits) of the place.

It is also one of the five remaining hanamachi (flower towns) or geisha districts of Kyoto. These days it is so popular with tourists that one moves along in a throng (again like Venice); slowly, one vast mass made up of many bodies, edging along from north to south or south to north; bodies trying to squeeze past bodies. People stopping to read menus, people stopping to take selfies – others navigating around them. How the maiko and geiko get about, I’m not sure!

I took my own secret trip to Pontocho – here at home in Perth. I spent the whole month of December on site (in my head) – working on “Pontocho Perfect“. Not only did I space-travel, but I time-traveled, because I worked from a photo I had taken in 2005. How peaceful Pontocho was at just after 12 noon on Monday 14th November 2005. Two maiko swept past me in a flourish of floaty fabric. I delighted in their cool perfection.

“Floating in Kyoto”, 2006, was the first drawing I made of this scene. Note the different composition between the two drawings. (No lantern on the right in the new drawing.)

I don’t know who the maiko were but perhaps somebody will recognize them from the following photos.

Glowing in Kyoto

Time stands still – are we in the twenty-first century? Katsutomo-san approaches her okiya, key-in-hand, on a Gion street, while the always-present lanterns bob and glow.

As I continue to have an emotional pull toward lanterns, wooden tea-houses and geisha, I am unearthing my twenty year cache of Kyoto photos in order to mine them for possible new drawings. “Glowing in Kyoto”, just completed, is drawn from a photo I took on a summer afternoon in 2014.

I made a drawing from this same image back in 2014. I called it “The Art of Elegance”. You can play “spot the difference” between the two drawings.

“The Art of Elegance”, coloured pencils, 39.5 x 48 cm. Drawn in August 2014.

I find solace in subject matter such as this. The calm demeanor of elegant Katsutomo-san, the repetitive slats of wood and reassuring red lanterns are a meditation; a nostalgic world I can disappear into.

Candid Kyoto

On Sunday evening I departed Perth, Australia. In the late morning I arrived in Kyoto, Japan. For four days I walked and photographed.

Monday

Mamesaya-san (and maiko hidden behind her) waiting for the light to change at the pedestrian crossing on Shijo-dori.

Streetscape at northern end of Pontocho.

Entrance to a restaurant in Miyagawa-cho.

Kotono-san and small children at dusk in Miyagawa-cho.

A wave and a smile from Fukumiyo-san in Miyagawa-cho.

A contrast in style as two young ladies pass one another in Miyagawa-cho.

Fairy lights, neon and lantern outside a convenience store.

Kokinu-san on Shijo-dori followed closely by Wile E Coyote!

Tuesday

The view from my hotel window at 5:45 a.m. In the foreground are the tea-houses of Gion Kobu.

I spent the morning exploring Higashiyama (the Eastern Hills).

In the evening I met Hidetae-san at Gion Maikoya and gave her a koala.

A maiko quickly escapes a bottleneck of people in Pontocho.

Strange and shadowy goings-on inside the alley.

Wednesday

At the northern end of the Path of Philosophy, one comes to Ginkaku-ju or the Silver Pavilion – a Zen temple.

Taking shelter under umbrellas from the relentless sun.

Selfies during an afternoon on Hanamikoji-dori in Gion Kobu.

Thursday

Haruchizu-san makes her way along Hanamikoji-dori.

And on Friday I flew back home.

Candid – 1. truthful and straight-forward; frank. 2. (of a photograph of a person) taken informally, especially without the subject’s knowledge.

Gion Kouta

“Gion kouta” is the name of a hauntingly beautiful dance performed by maiko and geiko. The kouta (song) lyrics wistfully describe timeless Kyoto; its romantic changing seasons, fleeting beauty and ephemeral geisha.

I give this drawing the title “Gion Kouta” as, to me, it has all the romance of the song. Maiko (with accompanying shikomi) hurry through drizzle under their paper wagasa (umbrellas). Ichiriki-tei (the most famous tea-house in all of Japan) is on the left; lanterns and street lamps glow and reflect, and in the distance loom the eastern hills – Higashiyama.

Even the hotel where I stay is in this drawing. APA Gion Hotel is the pinkish multi-level building behind on the left. I’ll be there again in a couple of weeks’ time.

I took the source photo for this drawing in June 2016. It took me seven years to figure out how to bring about the drawing I had in mind! Once I began, the drawing drew itself quite effortlessly – and came to a resolution ‘just like that’ without angst.

Click on the link below to hear the beautiful and somewhat melancholy tune of “Gion Kouta”.

Christmas in July

On a cold July day a Scarlet Robin alights on a branch of a silver birch tree. What a contrast his bright feathers make to the bleak winter tones surrounding him. I am reminded of a shiny bauble in a Christmas tree – establishing with his radiant presence a feeling that all is, after all, well.

Tapestry

At the upper section of Araluen Botanic Park in Perth’s hills are the rose gardens. Rose and salvia bushes are framed by a backdrop of both native eucalyptus and introduced deciduous trees – the latter in autumn leaf.

This drawing changes depending on your viewing distance from it. It comes together from across a room so I invite you to move back from your screen to create a little distance between you and it.

“Tapestry” is in the same genre as these two below; my aim in each of them is to suggest a dreamy atmosphere of space and light in nature.

“Transcendence” coloured pencil drawing, 28 x 41 cm. drawn in 2022.

and…

“Day Trip to Giverny” a drawing made after my visit to Monet’s garden. 33 x 42 cm. Drawn in 2018.

“Day Trip to Giverny” (2018) is a favourite of my drawings and it hangs on my bedroom wall. It gave me courage to attempt “Tapestry” and reassured me when I doubted my ability to make this latest drawing work.