A Review: Water. Color. Ink: An Exhibition by Jun-Pierre Shiozawa

Rain over Castro

by Jane Morris Pack

Jun-Pierre Shiozawa is currently exhibiting work at the Argonauta Hotel in Parikia, Paros.  The show is comprised of landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, as well as nudes and surrealistic dreamlike images. They are all works on paper either with watercolor or ink and demonstrate a range of handling at varied levels of abstraction.

In his artist statement Jun expresses that his watercolor technique was born out of his love of sketching in the natural environment of Paros. Indeed, watercolor is particularly suited to capturing the light drenched vistas of Greece. It is evident that the watery delicate images record his love for the island and they show various locales which are familiar to most of us living here. “Rain on the Castro” or “Small Marina” record our daily backdrop.  They bring with this sense of recognition an enjoyment of seeing things afresh, the chance to notice new feelings and sentiments attached to the familiar. Though they are not sentimental they note the human element: two fishermen talking, a woman hanging laundry. He does not descend, however, into the picturesque. It brings to mind the work of the American painter Winslow Homer, whose images simply record the facts, with no straining for effect, yet manage to convey a particular emotion attached to a view. It is not postcard material, nor merely decorative. We feel in each image that we sit beside the artist for a moment, observant and at ease, sensing the place and the people who inhabit it.

Setting Ship

Jun’s ink work is something different and here he enters the world of dreams: a huge reptile occupies the mosaic floor of a church, an antlered deer wanders among columns of a basilica. In “Setting Ship” a ship plunges vertically into the sea as the sun would into the western horizon. Its rippled reflection shifts our balance and we feel vertigo and tension. The ink work is dark, subterranean in feel, below the level of consciousness, as though our mind recombined images during the night and left us curious on awaking what meaning was intended.

Jun is working now on a series of portraits which will be shown in October. We look forward to seeing them on the wall, all together, for a glimpse once again into our island’s matrix.

Jun-Pierre Shiozawa teaches painting and drawing at The Aegean Center. You can visit his web-site at junpierre.net.