Kobe magnolia heavy industry sunset
Oil, wax, acrylic on wooden panel
12 cm h × 18 cm w
The Art of the Delay: Reflections on David Hockney, Katsushika Hokusai, and the Studio
At 88 years old, David Hockney recently warned the art world: “There’s much too much abstract painting being done now.” I don’t believe Hockney is attacking abstraction itself. Instead, he is questioning art that lacks a deep connection to the world. For me, the real power of painting lies in what I call the Davidson Hypothesis (t → t + D). This is the idea that art isn't a direct copy of what we see; it is a response that happens after a structural delay (D).
The "Sovereign Space"
Between the moment our eyes see something and the moment our hand makes a mark, there is a "Sovereign Space." This is where our nervous system processes what we’ve observed. What eventually appears on the canvas—like this Kobe magnolia against an industrial sunset—isn't just a flower. It is a reimagined image built from fragments and residues of memory.
While masters like Paul Cézanne and Hockney intuitively understood this gap between optics and the brush, they didn’t formalize it as a biological necessity. In my studio praxis, I treat this delay as the very place where art is born.
Why "Newness" Still Matters
There is a common mistake in art: thinking that there is "nothing new" left to do. But if you honestly paint your own way of seeing, something original will always happen. History shows us this through movements like Impressionism, which found unity by embracing the diversity of individual perception.
The Wisdom of Age
Hokusai famously said he didn’t create anything truly good until he was seventy. Now that I am in the latter half of my sixties, I understand what he meant. There is a specific focus that comes with sustained studio praxis within the sovereign space across many epochs. By looking closely at small, often overlooked details of our environment—a process I call Forensic Rhopography—we find that the world remains an endless source of discovery.
