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My interest specifically in screens and sliding doors, rather than things in Japanese in general, developed after my first trip to Japan in 1985. I particularly remember viewing an entire wall of sliding doors in one Kyoto temple depicting monumental pine trees. The effect of these gilded doors struck me with an unexpected vigor. Here were ancient decorative panels that remained vital. At four hundred years of age, they lustily reflected light across a huge dark room proclaiming the authority if the shogunate they were painted to extoll.
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Gold leaf made its way into my paintings, and my subject matter began to shift from figures to flowers and plant forms. In my studio practice I looked more closely at Asian brushwork. I also began experimenting with more exaggerated horizontal formats in my studio work. Japanese influences slumbered and meshed with other sources for a few years. However, as a counterbalance, Matisse, Bonnard, Klimpt, O'Keefe and Demuth remained (and still remain) important sources for me.
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At first nearly all of my compositions employed chance operation as a compositional structure. To determine the exact placement of the flowers, I made a set of small paper squares, each with an arrow drawn on it. I would select one particular flower and decide how many times it would be repeated on the painting. I placed the screen flat on the studio floor and then I (or more frequently, my son Seppi) would stand on a ladder with eyes closed and drop the squares of paper onto the screen. Wherever the paper markers fell, I painted, using the arrow to indicate the direction the flower would be facing. When this process was completed, I repeated the same procedure for additional flowers until the painting became complete. The results have always surprised me with compositions that are always satisfying and strangely unexpected.
Robert Kushner in Robert Kushner:Opening Doors, DC Moore Gallery exhibition catalogue, p.7-10
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