Flight of the spirit 2 Photograph

Let colors dance! Artist StatementAs an artist I would like to save the world with my art ... at least a part of it. I would like to change the way people perceive life and experience the world. Painting is my contribution to a world where art and life come together as a holistic journey. I would like my art to lift people's spirits; it should be love songs and cheers to human life.Painting for me is dancing. Dancers create their fantastic world with bodies and emotions, as painters do with colors, paints and brushes. I paint because painting is physically direct; this is a quality it shares with dance. Physicality is an important factor to me in art making, and I love the direct response of paint. As a painter, I try to let colors sing and vibrate to express energy, movement, and space. Like the dancer, music drives my creative force and helps move my brushes. If you could see me paint, you might think I am dancing -- my feet and my brushes move rhythmically. In fact, I love to dance, and dance, improvisational dance in particular, informs my painting. Dance is energy and movement through space. Similarly, as a painter, I am very interested in movement in space; my forms come in and out of space as they move throughout the picture plane. Color transitions produce the foreground space and push the deep space away allowing new forms to emerge from it. The dynamics of my design create an interplay between the background and the figures that invites the viewer to enter the space. I think of this dynamic as lost and found. Through the layers of colors and brushstrokes, I pull forward forms and colors. At the same time, I respond with colors and forms according to what has happened on the canvas, just as improvisational dance, responding to others movements; it is action and reaction.I want viewers to experience my art at an emotional level. I want viewers to be more than viewers; I want them to be participants in the dance. I would like them to get into my painting and I want my art to be a part of their lives. -- Hiromi Okumura May , 2009