EMail by RELEE: The Art of Richard Lee

The art of Richard Lee

Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 08:24:25
From: Richard E. Lee <realee@thegrid.net>
Subject: Wow!!!!

Dear Daralee, thank you for your incredible efforts on my behalf [on your poetry Web site]. I am humbled. And yes everything you have decided on looks good to me. I do want to make a note of some kind on the little drawing of the walking figure.... The watercolor is after a drawing made by Sengai, a Zen teacher and calligrapher. I found it in a marvelous book I own called, Sengai, the Zen of Ink and Paper. It was written by D.T. Suzuki, the famous scholar of Zen who made Zen, in fact, available to the west. I like Sengai a lot. He was also a poet. My favorite Zen Buddhist calligrapher-poet is Ryokan.... When I am stuck in my art work, I often try to copy artists who were not stuck. Sometimes it gets me going again. The Sengai character is so archetypical that I found I had to have him in my gallery of characters. But I made several changes. There are some words on the drawing I sent: that acknowledge my indebtedness. They look like some kind of esoteric calligraphy.

Yesterday I counted the number of cartoon-watercolors I have done in the last year--more than 60! I shall probably end up doing nothing but water color cartoons. People have even started buying from me, incredible as it may sound. What I do is scan the original art, then print it out with my new Epson 2000P printer on special archival paper using special archival inks. For the first time an ink jet printer will make prints that last up to 200 years....