A TRIP down the rabbit hole into a world full of Alice in Wonderland-style marvels met Julie Podstolski on her first trip to Japan, though she was more concerned about mastering chopsticks for business dinners than having a tea party.
But tea parties and Japan took on a whole new significance after Podstolski, who works exclusively with coloured pencils, fell in love with the many juxtapositions between modern and ancient Japan.
“In 2003 my husband went to Japan on business and he told me I had to come along this time,” she said.
“He forced my hand, and the funny thing is I didn’t want to go, I just said ‘I am not interested in this culture’.
She admits it was a case of ‘famous last words’. “When I got there one of the first things I saw was Kurashiki Railway Station and that huge head and I thought, this place is really interesting,” she said.
The photograph Podstolski took turned into one of the few pencil drawings she will never sell, and illustrates the contrast between a massive billboard of a western blonde with the urban Japanese environment.
But her love of Japan really ignited when she saw her first maiko (the Japanese word for an apprentice geiko, known in the western world as geisha) in Kyoto, who “just stepped out of the darkness. I whipped my camera out and got two photos, which later became drawings.
“It was like I was Alice in Wonderland, and I thought, oh my gosh, this place is interesting.”
Podstolski said her first trip spawned an “obsession” with Japan, and she has now visited 11 times. Her photo-realistic drawings of geiko and maiko are illustrated from self-taken photographs, which often means a long (sometimes wet) wait to catch sight of her illusive subjects.
But she loves less-than-perfect weather for its ambient light.
“To me, maiko and geiko are living breathing works of art, they’re so beautiful and so obsessed with their art. I think the attraction is like magnet to magnet,” she said.
Podstolski will present a 30-piece art exhibition, ‘Geisha: The Allure of Mystique’, at Kingfisher Gallery, West Perth, from September 15 to October 10.
Call 9486 9822 for information.