Is Visual Art Music or Literature?

The Peregrines of Manayunk. Mokuhaga by Ken Januski. Copyright 2025.

I have finished the mokuhanga of the peregrine falcons of Manayunk and St. John's Church and wrote about much of their story in my last post.

But you might wonder how I ended up with this picture. I talked very briefly about it last time when I showed the pencil sketch that served as its basis.

Preliminary sketch for the new mokuhanga. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski.

After doing quite a few field sketches through my scope on two or three visits to St. John's Church I also made some watercolor sketches from photos I'd taken. After deciding to try to come up with an idea for a print I just got out a large sketchbook and came up with the drawing above.

What in the world is it? Well that's where the title of this post comes in. Many people prefer their visual art to be pretty literary, clearly illustrating an object or idea. The purpose of the art is very literal and any deviation from the literal is bad, at least in their minds. Others, especially in western European/American art from the 20th century on thinks of visual art as closer to music. It is abstract but wide-ranging it its emotional impact, like music. It is not limited by facts, visual or otherwise.

Of course visual art  shouldn't be literature or music. It should be visual art, whatever that is. In any case as I sat down to make this sketch I just let a summary of my experiences viewing and sketching the peregrines over a week flow onto the paper. I hadn't really thought about this until recently. But I think this is a good explanation. It is just a visual recording of my experiences.

That means showing all the peregrines(actually 6 in all, 2 adults and 4 fledglings) but also their environment, the church and its steeples and roofs, the surrounding utility structures on which they often perched, and all my sketches of them perched in various locations. Even the food handoff from parent to child of a recently caught European starling.

Having spent most of my life as an abstract artist I feel perfectly free to make real objects abstract or to add the abstract and the more realistic. There is over 100 years of history now of this type of art. Still it probably bothers some. But I can't worry about them. As many people know art is first of all for the artist who makes it, perhaps not in terms of making a living from it, but certainly in terms of artistic satisfaction. So I'm quite satisfied with this. It mixes realistic and abstract as well as flatter more abstract space and deeper more atmospheric traditional space. I like that.

In the long run though it is also quite realistic in the sense that it recreates my experience over the week of watching the peregrines.

This is probably the most complex mokuhanga I've ever done. I'm sure many would say: 'Please, please, please start simple and then get complex. First learn the rudiments of mokuhanga and then get fancy.' It makes perfect sense to me but I just can't do it that way. I need to be motivated to make an image and then hope that I can master the technical aspects as I go.

But I would reiterate what I've said before: mokuhanga is a wonderful medium for making art. It has left me frustrated at some point in almost every print that I have ever made. But the rewards have far outweighed the problems. It is very hard to explain how much freedom you have with mokuhanga. A printing press with a million options right on the small table in front of the you. The main ingredient of the press being a handheld baren that can vary in price from around $50 to over $1000. But it weighs only a few ounces and can be repaired by you yourself. The chisels can last a lifetime. The paints are watered based and non-toxic. And you work on beautiful, often hand-made paper. Did I mention a rich history? I don't want to go on. I'm sure I break as many rules of mokuhanga and that tradition as I do of European/American art especially pre-20th century. But I find it an incredibly rich and enjoyable medium.

I have printed 12 of these so far, all on Nishinouchi paper. I plan to print at least 24 more and then will have to cull out the ones with minor blemishes. When that is all finished I will put them up for sale on Etsy.