The image I painted is of the landscape of my hometown where I spent my life from the age of nine to nineteen. I lived on a mortar-shaped slope on the edge of a mountain behind Kengonin (rebuilt after burning down in 2016) in Higashiura-cho, Chita-gun, Aichi Prefecture. The wooded area in his yard was a friend of the "moyashikko" who had moved there from Nagoya City. The motif of "Cherry Blossoms on Sliding Pond" is a large cherry tree that slipped into the pond due to a landslide. The pond has dried up, but the cherry trees continue to bloom every year. The motif of "Heaven Behind the Jizo" is the grave of the Kito family pet, located behind the Jizo at Kankonin Temple. Dogs are kept as guard dogs in various parts of the property, and two of them are depicted in the "Concrete at the Yield". A guard dog of my grandmother's generation was also kept in the vicinity of the aforementioned cherry trees.
The tendency of his works changed frequently since he was young. He received cold stares from those around him, but I guess he was shallow in many ways, such as not being passionate about what he was doing just before, or not being able to stick to it. Recently, I have been thinking that the most important thing in the creation of a painting is to bring the work into focus. When I was given this project, I thought that in order to paint a concrete landscape, it was necessary to give it a strong meaning. Among the landscapes I chose as motifs, I have painted pet graves twice in the past. I use photography as a way to free myself from the representations and compositions I paint.
For health reasons, he refrains from using oil paints. The painting medium he used this time was "Open Acrylic" by Golden. Compared to regular acrylic paints, the drying speed is slower, allowing the artist to work in a similar sense of time to that of oil paints. From the time of assembling the support until the painting was finished, I was able to concentrate on the extraordinary experience I was sharing with the screen, perhaps due to my background in oil painting.
