Goro Sugita is an honored Japanese painter and arts educator, and is the founder of an acclaimed art school in Tokyo, where he teaches elementary age children. His meditative and abstract paintings illustrate the spirit of the Japanese crane Tancho (once an endangered species) and reflect Buddhist philosophies of compassion and harmony that are central to his mystical environmental vision. He has exhibited internationally, with major exhibitions in Tokyo, New York, and Washington D.C.
Goro Sugita has engaged environmental and Buddhist philosophical questions with the Man and Crane series for over thirty years, as he contemplates and paints the crane’s energy, grace, elegance, and beauty within a diminished habitat. His mystical images emerge through a meditative painting process, where he adds, scrapes, and sands multiple layers of paint. On the surface, one can barely detect the figures that were scratched into layers of wet paint. The vitality in Goro’s paintings recall Van Gogh’s spiritual energy, aura, and fire. One can also compare Goro’s work to Monet’s beautiful ethereal water surfaces or to Clifford Still’s vision of the sublime.
In 1970, Goro was stunned by a TV documentary that depicted the plight of the wild crane (Grus japonensis) referred to as “Tancho.” At the time it was an endangered species, with only twenty remaining in a small marsh habitat in the Doto region of Hokkaido, the northern most Island of Japan. Goro comments on his relationship to the crane:

Tancho once thrived throughout Japan and was the subject of classical themes in Japanese art that included flowers, birds, wind, and moon. I was immediately drawn by the beauty of Tancho and felt an impulse to portray this crane. Its movement was graceful and the feathers were innocently pure white. Tancho continues to be the sole theme of my work... It has been my ritual to visit the Tancho’s habitat every winter for over thirty years... Human beings have been foolishly destroying our environment and wasting natural resources in the name of civilization... people in the Doto region, such as the late Sadajiro Yamazaki, helped save Tancho through simple compassion. Through the life of Tancho, I would like to pursue the true meaning of life.

Goro’s artistic interpretations of the crane do not model Roger Tory Peterson’s beautifully illustrated birds. Peterson followed Aristotle’s realistic philosophy of art - celebrating “mimesis.” Mimesis is the popular western preference for “objective realism” which strives for the creation of a mirrored or photographic image. Peterson’s technique and vision continues to inspire generations of amateur bird watchers,environmentalists, and ornithologists. Can Goro Sugita’s
nonrepresentational paintings illustrate the nature and beauty of the crane, and provoke an equally powerful inspiration?

Abstract images elicit truths, impressions, and feelings not traditionally accessible through mimesis. His meditative visions represent the underlying framework of life as interpreted by the mystic’s vision, the biologists microscope, and the physicist’s theories related to space, time, energy, and matter. In his work, one can imagine the pure energy or aura sustaining the core of the crane’s existence, a microscopic view of the cells within the crane’s body, a magnified impression of feathers, or a beautiful sunset in water. His paintings also represent a cosmic view, with energies and thoughts penetrating our consciousness and expanding throughout the universe.

The Man and Crane exhibition is equivalent to an I-and-Thou relationship, a holy inseparable relationship with all of life and nature. Peterson’s and Goro’s artistic approaches are polarized (Eastern and Western) yet, when united as complimentaries, can create a deeper reverence for birds, nature, and spiritual energies.
Goro wrestles with classical conflicts and questions. Why do we continue to ignore our ethical responsibilities as caretakers of the earth? Can we continue to gluttonously devour natural resources, taint the land, and pollute the air? Our pseudo-rational culture clearly demonstrates irrational behaviors by continuing to taint the unique, precious, and delicate Earth environment.
Kiichiro Hayashi, Director of the Ikeda Museum of Twentieth Century Art and member of the International Association of Art Critics writes:

The Philosophy of nature that Sugita has learned from the cranes has implications for his philosophy of life. How should people live? What are we to make of life and death? What is the nature of eros or love, both of which are closely entwined with life and death? Sugita has asked himself these questions and tries to find the answers by contemplating the cranes. He has created his own expressive forms in a very intelligent way that is far removed from mimetic depiction. He paints deep psychological landscapes, with a balanced style.
Goro Sugita lives in Tokyo where he is an honored arts educator and painter, who has exhibited in Tokyo, New York, and Washington D.C. He founded his own art school where he teaches elementary age students, along with a few adult classes.

His Man and Crane series was exhibited in February, 2001 at JCC’s Weeks Gallery, as part of our growing international cultural series. The following summer, James Colby and Dave Poulin, a Jamestown bronze sculptor, visited Goro’s family and traveled throughout Japan. In the summer of 2002, Dave Poulin and Carol Lorenc of the Arts Council organized a cultural artists exchange for Goro and his adult students. At this time Goro, as a gesture of friendship and thanks, donated this painting to JCC’s Weeks Gallery.

James D. Colby, Weeks Gallery director