Densho Digital Archive - Rose Niguma Interview (denshovh-nrose

<Begin Segment 13>

MR: I want to ask more about your art. In this painting of the dragon, there's so much movement and color. Can you talk about your use of movement and color?

RN: Well, we had an exhibit that Roberta Kennedy started with the Japanese and Chinese artists at the Chinese Benevolent Society. She started it, and my painting was that, they have dragon dancers, you know, New Year's or whatever celebration they have these dragons. Well, dragon is not a bad force in Asia like Saint George the Dragon like west. They're not an evil force, so I never thought of dragon as being evil, to me I didn't. And so when I saw the dance movement and stuff like that and having an exhibit there, I thought, well, one thing is I just painted that, and it's semi-abstract. You could see the movement there, but the head is right there. See the round thing? That's his head. I broke it up there, and then the movement, and dragons breathe smoke and fire. That's that there. But I like the painting. That's why it's in my room. I have others. But it is colorful, but people don't know what it is until I tell them. But if you do look, you notice that if I tell you, see the dragons moving, movement and all the smoke and fire all that, see that. You have to have an eye, so I put the round eye right there where the head is. But most people, I call a pensive dragon. I don't call [inaudible] anything like that. They like the color, the movement, but they don't know what it is.

MR: Do color and movement play a big part in your art these days?

RN: I like curves. It's more general than angled, see. Some have curves; that makes the movement. I don't know why I do these things. I just do them, and it just comes to me, then I just go ahead. But that took two months to complete. Most of my artwork takes that long. The reason is that I wanted to be finished, you know. That's why artwork is really expensive. I don't think people can afford them.

MR: How do you know when you're finished?

RN: Well, you just know because all the while you're working, it comes to an end, and you know that it's end that is finished. You know yourself, see, so you don't continue with it. You go on to another painting. I don't know how to explain all this because art is very difficult to explain. It's hard to explain. And I like abstraction. I could do realistic things too like my mother there. But you see, you have a style. It's not really realistic. That I learned when I went to art school when I got out of camp one year later. Well, the teacher don't tell you do this or do that. They guide you. They somehow know, you know, then you somehow learn from that. I think it's quite subtle what you learn from that. Some people never get it and others will. And I think because artwork [inaudible] to me because there's so many obstacles. I wanted to learn to make better into really have [inaudible] express it more, more art tools that you acquire, you know. They say you're not supposed to think of technique, but what can you do to, it's tools that you use. It's very central I think, so I use them.