A boy from afar Print

About the image of self found from the gaze toward the world and others. I am working on artworks that can allow others to glimpse the process of exploring myself. I am drawing people, but they are overlapped with the image of a forest. From a specific moment, I met the real me at the woods I walked through. However, you may have questions about the relationship between the people in the paintings with a forest or the artist (me) because the people in my pictures are the people I faced in my life and their images. However, the people I drew were the ones who had the moments to put myself into them. Sometimes, I draw when I met him/her, or sometimes I draw an image in a photo. However, all of them were the objects that I could share my unique feelings I got from certain facial expressions and atmospheres. Thus, for me, they were not just others, but another me who reflected my inner self. And, I am overlapping the moments with the feelings I felt in the forest. The appearance of a person drawn with a forest in the background can be both a feeling of the forest and a feeling about the person. So I did not differ significantly between the brush touching methods for drawing the forest, the background, and the person's face. When drawing a person's face, I used the same way of drawing used when I draw a forest: I overlapped the multiple touches intermittently. So the people in the paintings appear to be somewhat absorbed in the woods. In fact, the facial expressions of the characters I drew may appear to be partially hidden or almost erased. As a result, my paintings' audiences can feel the colors created by the numerous brushstrokes first come into their eyes as they look into abstract images. Others’ faces and their images are integrated with a forest, which was their context. Through the colors and the abstract expressions of a forest, the imaginary situations are revealed in layers. They interset with the facial expressions of the people who seem to be hidden. Like a mirror, a forest is becoming a place where various signals I have discovered are displayed. In a forest, the perspective on life and death of the artist, myself, is contained. Also, the traces such as a journey to find myself are left. I think a particular situation triggered the journey - the life in a strange place and the death of my mother - for me; however, after all, for me, this became the process of getting to know myself and humans.