Clifton Karhu - Karhu of Kyoto

It is surprising to find major omissions in Wikipedia. Today I was introduced to the American artist Clifton Karhu, but it seems he lacks an entry on Wikipedia, that on-line repository of all knowledge, so I have had to dig deeper for information on his life and background.

Of Finnish descent, he was a native of Duluth Minnesota and was a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He first went to Japan as a soldier in the US army shortly after WW2. Then he returned in the 1950s with his wife as a Lutheran missionary. This came to little, but they stayed and Clifton turned to fishing and teaching English. He remained in Japan until he died in 2007 and became, as his brother described it, "More Japanese than the Japanese." He lived in Kyoto, wore kimonos, went completely native. Famous in Japan, he is commonly referred to as Karhu of Kyoto.

The following work is representative. It has many of the elements that I particularly love: line, colour, geometry, two-dimensionality. And Kyoto is surely one of the most magical cities on Earth. I was there in winter. I especially like the winter scenes.

I've never quite understood the dictum, so influential in Western art, that "there is no such thing as a line in nature." I understand that idea, but Japanese art is a powerful testament that line and nature are not mutually exclusive. In Western art, it seems, an interest in line will take you away from nature (observation) into abstraction (concept). Lines are abstractions: there are no lines in nature. The Japanese don't fall into that dichotomy. Line is entirely compatible with their concern for nature.