> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.basselsj.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Liberation from Fighting Series 01: Sketches - URL: https://www.basselsj.com/liberation-from-fighting-sketches/ - Published: 2013-02-10T18:02:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-04T18:24:51.000Z - Description: I was teaching children to fight and rewarding them for it, and I could not answer why. These sketches come from the years I spent asking what the medium of martial arts is, and finding that the answer was fighting itself. - Author: BasselsJ - Tags: Liberation from Fighting, #appetite, #project, #Painting, #Ink, Watercolour, Acrylic I began to move away from painting the Wisdom Kings as the work turned darker, toward students fighting violently. What I was teaching started to trouble me, and the doubt changed the direction of everything after it. Why are we motivating children to fight with hollow rewards? Was I teaching the right answers without understanding the problem? If every art has a medium through which its purpose is defined, what is the medium of martial arts? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-04-18-15.35.30_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-04-18-15.35.35_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-04-18-15.35.47_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-04-20-16.54.26_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-04-20-17.55.40_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-04-18-15.35.19_E-1.jpg) Ink on newsprint. Left to right, top row: Liberation from Fighting Sketch 03, Liberation from Fighting Sketch 04, Liberation from Fighting Sketch 05\. Left to right, bottom row: Liberation from Fighting Sketch 06, Liberation from Fighting Sketch 07 and Liberation from Fighting Sketch 02. This was free-form painting, acrylic on canvas and ink on newsprint, closer to early American abstraction than to anything I had done before. The violent energy of the marks is what produced the figures in them, rather than the other way round. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-05-13-17.06.34_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015--ink--shades-of-fighitng-period-21_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2016-10-27-22.59.31-HDR_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/IMG_1369_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2014-07-16-16.23.02_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2016-11-22-23.16.35-HDR_E.jpg) Ink on newsprint. Left to right, top row: Liberation From Fighting Sketch 11, Sanchin, Yokogeri and Seiunchin. Left to right, bottom row: Shikodachi haraiotoshi, Washi-de, Seiunchin. This period revealed the possibility that fighting wasn't a skill or behaviour but a medium from which they are created, and that the study of martial arts was an *art*, a theme, a radical alternative to understanding fighting in a way our eyes can't see, as though we are all born with the same learning obstacle. I saw martial arts like the black crayon that helps people understand something that at first appears distorted, a way of providing texture to the contours of a large feature of human nature we otherwise outlaw and yet celebrate almost everywhere. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-04-28-17.41.21_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-04-28-17.41.45_E.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/3f/3f3f7cd7-0d80-48d1-990a-cf54b706ed68/content/images/2023/04/2015-04-28-21.27.05_E.jpg) Ink on newsprint. Left to right: **Liberation From Fighting Sketch 08, Liberation From Fighting Sketch 09 and Liberation From Fighting Sketch 10.* I did not answer the question here. What these sketches record is the moment it became askable: the suspicion that the thing I had been teaching for a decade was the medium rather than the lesson. --- **Exhibited** *Core. Liberation. Awakening*, group exhibition with Artists in Momentum. Mississauga, Ontario, 31 May 2015.