‘Incomplete is complete’

The painter sits in an armchair on a drop cloth spattered with drops of dark paint like a negative impression of a night sky. He stares at the canvas standing 10 feet before him, alternately squinting and relaxing his eyes, searching for his vision in the streaks and shapes of oil.

Suddenly, all in one motion, he stands and strides forward. His brush, already in his outstretched hand, pulls him to the canvas as an excited child pulls a parent along a sidewalk to show them some new and fascinating thing.

The brushstrokes come in quick, noisy bursts, shaking the tripod that holds the work in place. The sound of bristles scraping against the canvas, like a cat scratching at a door, drowns out the noise from the world outside the studio.

Once every minute, he takes four steps back, looking intently at the section of the piece he’s just worked on, and looking ahead to the area he’ll go next. After a few seconds, he retraces his steps exactly back to the canvas.

An unseen yet tangible connection exists between Tadashi Hayakawa and his work — a tether that pulls him back each time he drifts away.

Streaks, swirls and lines spread across the piece like barely-formed storm clouds, pushed and dragged along by a divine hand. The process — retreating, returning, swiping and stroking the brush, creating forms and lines out of a glob of paint — repeats itself again and again for more than an hour.

The final time he steps away from the canvas his face changes from squinting skepticism to a wide-eyed smile.

“Ah,” bursts from his lips. He knows the work is finished.

“To me this one is done. I have just expressed the excitement of being alive,” he says, bringing his arms to his chest then raising them into the air as he says the words.

He is asked how he knows when a painting is completed.

He closes his eyes as he speaks, then slowly, deliberately, explains the unfinished quality of his work.

“Many artists explain every brushstroke, but this doesn’t leave any breathing room for the imagination,” he says. He paraphrases Einstein, who once said “imagination is more important than knowledge.”

“In art, imagination is more important than technique,” he says.

“For me, incomplete is complete.”