2021 Akiko Enokido - American Society of Botanical Artists

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Yokoso, Minasama!

The Significance of Hospitality in the Work of This Year’s Winner of the

Diane Bouchier Award for Excellence in Botanical Art, Akiko Enokido

by Scott Stapleton

Akiko Enokido

For her hour-and-fifteen-minute webinar, “An Artist’s Journey: Painting Japanese Camellias,” offered in conjunction with ASBA’s 24th Annual International exhibition, Akiko Enokido used a full third of her presentation to talk about the flower’s history, beginning in the 17th century, its appearance in paintings and in print, the present-day gardens and other institutions that grow and care for its many varieties, plus a few personal accounts of her engagement with the specimens featured in her paintings. For participants eager to discover “how she did it,” the material could have been thought extraneous—interesting, to be sure, but not directly relevant to learning how to paint Japanese camellias on vellum. For Akiko, the background material was not extraneous, it was intrinsic to learning how she came to paint her beloved camellias, and intrinsic to how she wanted her webinar viewers to learn to paint them. It was impossible for her to separate context from practice. To do so would have been to forswear omotenashi.

Omotenashi is the Japanese word Akiko chose to describe her relationship to botanical art. It derives from the country’s celebrated tea ceremony, and in her words it means “to treat others with the right attitude and behavior.” That means making honored guests and friends, minasama, feel especially welcome-Yokoso!-while making you, the host, prepare diligently for their every need. A quick run-through, for example, of even a reprint of the Chinka Zufu, the 17th century illustrated folio of all the known species of Japanese camellias in the Imperial Collection at the time, all 720 of them (there are more than 20,000 cultivars today) was out of the question. Viewers had to attend, even as Akiko herself did when visiting the Soukaen Bunko Foundation, to the patient page-by-page perusal of the paintings. More than that, the director of the library displaying this treasure, Mr. Saemon-no-jo-Ryoken Ogasawara, had to be acknowledged, for without his devotion to such plants the library would not exist at all. When displaying omotenashi, Akiko said “you are not giving whatever the guest wants. You are giving them the very best of what you would like them to see and experience.”

She could not have said as much when growing up. For one, she was not a guest in her own country. Her preparation was prescribed from birth. “In Japan, all children buy their own watercolor and oil pastel and crayon sets for their art classes when they start first grade. My mother wrote my name on each tube of paint, brushes, pastels and colored pencils so not to be mixed up with other students.” All children took shūji, as well, lessons in handling a brush in order to create the neat, balanced characters that introduce six-year-olds to Japanese calligraphy. It was expected, in short, that each child should have a basic skill set when it came to making art and, just as important, appreciating it.

Neither the basics nor the appreciation, however, determined who became an artist. Akiko’s first “aha” moment that she might be such a creature came when she was sketching an apartment complex building. “I noticed that one side of the building was a distinctly different color, and that by applying different colors to each side, I could make the building look three-dimensional.”

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“Aha,” indeed. Recognizing the power of color to create form quickly called for more training than anything her education up until then could offer. In 1988 she went to Paris to study printmaking at Atelier 17 (now called Atelier Contrepoint), arriving not long after the studio’s founder and guiding spirit, Stanley William Hayter, died. His disciples and successors, however, Hector Saunier and Juan Valladares, continued to champion his work and his most distinctive technical innovation, viscosity printing. Akiko was mesmerized by it, for it allowed you to print multiple colors at the same time. “The deepest layer becomes the front layer, and you have to be able to imagine the final outcome while you are putting down layers of colors on the plate.”

A foretaste of things to come?

In Paris, her subject matter was mostly buildings. When she moved to New York in 1990 to work in Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop, she began placing actual leaves on her plates before running them through the press. “The embossed marks left by the press create geometric designs that are central to the character of her work,” observed a critic in a New York Times review. The embossed marks were, indeed, central, but not because they realized a disembodied geometry. They marked the beginning of her love affair with plants.

"I was never comfortable,” she has said, “with paintings that expressed my own ideas and thoughts. But when I work with plants, I find myself being able to express myself honestly by simply concentrating on capturing their forms. And while being healed by them, I was able to find my place in the art world.”

Coming across Contemporary Botanical Artists: The Shirley Sherwood Collection (Cross River Press, 1996) in the New York Botanical Garden’s bookstore—a book that could well have launched a thousand botanical art careers—only confirmed the matter. Straightaway, she enrolled in NYBG’s Botanical Art & Illustration Certificate Program, receiving the certificate in 2004—the same year she became a member of ASBA. The following year she was in California and a member of BAGSC, the Botanical Artists Guild of Southern California. BAGSC, in case you didn’t know it, is the ASBA chapter that could well star in a documentary titled “Immersive Botanical Art.” Akiko reaped the benefits. She studied with Australia’s Jenny Phillips and the UK’s renowned Pandora Sellers, the very same artist whose “Blue Water Lily” graced the cover of the book that confirmed the direction of her life’s work.

The exhibitions came tumbling soon thereafter: Filoli in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011…; ASBA’s Annual International in 2009, 2010…; the Hunt Institute’s 13th International in 2010…. And then, somewhat unexpectedly, she moved back to Japan. This was in 2012 when her mother was not well (she is fully recovered now). Akiko had mixed feelings about the move. Her years abroad had been good to her. She was secure in her calling, very productive, and surrounded by adoring friends. Japan was…well, it was the place she left 24 years ago. What would she be returning to?

Even greater glory, as it turned out, plus full engagement with the culture that produced her to begin with and cared for her plants while she was gone. The recognitions continued: Filoli in 2012; ASBA’s International in 2015, 2016, 2019, and 2021; a Gold Medal at the Royal Horticultural Society’s exhibition in 2016; both the Third and Fourth NYBG/ASBA Triennials (Out of the Woods and Abundant Future); representing Japan in the 2018 Worldwide Botanical Art Exhibition; since 2018, regular participation in the National Tropical Botanical Garden’s documentation of its spectacular holdings on Kauai, Hawaii; numerous teaching events; in 2020, her first solo exhibition at the Beijing Botanical Garden; and, coming this May 13, she will be one of those who, because of their heartfelt wish to share what they know and love best, will help introduce Gifts from Japan: A Horticultural Journey Told Through Botanical Art at the Portland Japanese Garden in Portland, OR.

Minasama, how do you feel now??

Quite overwhelmed, thank you. But also very grateful for our host. Thank you, Akiko!

I discovered the Japanese Jack-in-the-pulpit which this painting is based upon, in my own backyard! It is native to Japan.

At The Oak Spring Garden Foundation, 2018 Botanical Artists in Residence. Mieko Ishikawa and I were the first artists of the Artists Residence Program at Oak Spring Garden Foundation. ©Akiko Enokido

1 I transfer the draft onto vellum, but only copy the rough outline of the flower. I will add fine detail lines in the color of the petals. It's like sketching. On vellum, it is

easy to erase wrong lines at this stage, so I hurry to shape the flower while it is in good condition.

2 I add the petal pattern. Start with the shadows of the petals and slowly darken them, especially on the left side to create highlights.

3 To make each petal stand up, the base of the petals are shaded darker, and orange color is applied near the stamen to reflect the color of the pollen. If you paint the entire flower in pink, it tends to look cold, so put orange color in the center of the flower to express the warmth of the flower.

4 The first layer takes a rough shape in light yellow-green and cerulean blue.

5 After I started drawing, I didn't like the way the leaves overlapped, so I moved the angle of the back leaves a bit.