Local Color
Sunday, October 7, 2001
BEN NORRIS'S FASCINATION with Hawaii's rain forests began as soon as he arrived on Oahu in 1936 to become the art teacher at Kamehameha School for Boys. He wanted to paint the forests, but he couldn't figure out how. A sea of greens
illuminates Norris’
watercolor forests"It's those darn leaves, 357 millions of them," says Norris, who is 91. "I was baffled by how I could paint them. I had to figure out 90 million different kinds of greens."
The color green is a difficult subject, Norris says. It has baffled artists for as long as there have been artists.
To paint a tree, let along a forest, the artist needs to figure out all different sorts of greens and how they would work together. Pink green, yellow green, gray greens, purple greens, and the list goes on. Then the greens must be of the correct lightness or darkness.
Place: John Dominis and Patches Damon Holt Gallery, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 900 S. Beretania St. Hawaii Rain Forests:
Watercolors by Ben Norris
Time: 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays, 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 24
Admission: $7; $4 for seniors, students and military; free to members and children under 12; free on first Wednesday of the month
Call: 532-8700
"If you get the greens all bright and lovely, the painting is not going to look good. It can be very uncomfortable to look at," Norris says.
That's a common pitfall for artists trying to portray nature, and that's why the old European masters stayed away from green paintings, Norris says. (Blue also was considered a brilliant color too difficult to master.)
It took him many years, but he has finally figured out how to get all the greens to his liking. His greens are luminous in a series of watercolors, "Hawaii Rain Forests," at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. The exhibit runs through Feb. 24.
"I worked for nearly nine years on 37 paintings. That's putting a tremendous amount of attention and time to just one watercolor," Norris says. Not all 37 paintings are on display. Only 10 have been shipped from Philadelphia, where he now resides, for the exhibit.
The paintings are based on photographs that he took while on Oahu. The paintings are not completely faithful to the details in the pictures. He took artistic license, editing and making composites of the photographs.Norris was an important and influential artist in Hawaii for nearly 40 years. He was born in Redlands, Calif., and graduated from Pomona College. He is a self-taught watercolorist, but he studied art at Harvard University and the Sorbonne in Paris.
A year after he moved to Hawaii, he joined the University of Hawaii's Art Department and later was promoted to be its chairman for 10 years. While at the university, he was responsible for bringing world-renowned artists to Hawaii, among them Max Ernst, Jean Charlot, Josef Albers and Dorothea Tanning.
Norris retired in 1975 and moved first to New York and then to Philadelphia, where he lives in a retirement community. His second bedroom serves as a studio.
During his tenure at the university, Norris prowled around in the forest in upper Manoa Valley. He snapped photographs, preserving images for inspiration later."I am interested in landscape, in nature, in sunlight, clouds and trees. I love the mountains. I love the land we live on," Norris says.
Norris chose watercolor as a medium because he felt an affinity for it. As with the color green, watercolor is a difficult medium. It allows no room for mistakes and requires careful planning in how the colors are applied.
"With watercolor you can only go from light to dark. When you are painting, you need to organize the lights and the darks into a structural relationship.
"With watercolor you have to paint quite a bit on trust. It's also knowledge and experience and organization of thoughts," Norris says.
Describing himself as an academic painter whose fascination focuses on the process of painting, Norris uses a batik-like method for his paintings. He begins with the light colors and uses a resist to block out areas as he builds up deeper colors with layers and layers of color washes. Despite the inordinate amount of time he spent to achieve the realistic look of the forests, Norris says he hopes his techniques convey more than just pretty images.
"The painter's job is to record feelings, as well as Nature and her green leaves," he says.
Gardening Calendar
Suzanne Tswei's art column runs Sundays in Today.
You can write her at the Star-Bulletin,
500 Ala Moana, Suite 7-210, Honolulu, HI, 96813
or email stswei@starbulletin.com
