Orange Dog & Flowers Painting

My challenge is to create new paintings full of eclectic images that go beyond cultural borders in the context of contemporary art. Art-making to me is a thought process, a means of having a dialogue with myself, and a kind of mindfulness. My style of art-making is like a serendipitous journey; hoping to see something unseen and to anticipate new encounters. I also try to find pieces of personal mythology from my everyday life, my memories, and my inner world. I strongly hope that the images of my artworks stimulate the viewer’s imagination and mix with their everyday life, or at times even disrupt it, and to be freely interpreted so that the viewer can create their own unique stories, which may eventually become lifelong memories. The ambiguity and enigma of my artworks are preserved instead of presenting a simplistic answer. I try to create images full of rich and miscellaneous questions that are open to a variety of interpretations. Playfulness to me is essential while painting. Each artwork is independent. However, artworks with diverse styles, motifs, and contexts can be juxtaposed to create new stories and meanings through their interactions; like a collective of unique individuals creating new connections and values from their aggregation. This is also how societies and natural ecosystems work. When I was an art student in Chicago in the late 1980s, Western contemporary art and the extensive collection of the Art Institute of Chicago made a tremendous impact on my art. I found myself creating art in the middle of a multicultural environment among American and international friends with diverse backgrounds. In this context, I needed to firmly maintain my identity by adopting and working with Japanese or traditional Asian motifs and concepts. Since then, I have been thinking about the idea of “pluralistic images and their formation from a variety of foreign cultural influences.” However, for the time being, I try not to dwell too much on my cultural background and other attributes when I make art. This is because, on the journey of looking for something unseen and expecting new encounters, if I am too conscious of preconceived ideas about myself, I might miss the emergence of the unseen right before my eyes. On the other hand, it is also inevitable to question “what is Japanese culture” and “who am I.