About "swimming constellation"

This is the first of seven works completed and the one that inspired me to produce the series of works in this exhibition.

At online solo exhibition "The night falls"

This work was born in June 2020, during a period of stay-home due to the COVID-19 disaster.

During this period, I lived even smaller than usual in my home and the surrounding city.

As I walked down the streets, where tall, square buildings towered over the streets, the sky I looked up at was snarled by those walls and the many power lines that cut through them.

The sky is definitely on the other side of these things, the same as it has always been.

I understand that in my head, but I want to see the wide sky with no barriers.

My longing and ideal of the beautiful sky has quietly accumulated within me.

And it came to be expressed through the act of painting the sky like the Northern Lights.

During this period, I experimented with painting techniques, and as a result, I found one technique that I liked.

Until then, I had been painting mainly with line drawings by fountain pen inks, but finally I wanted to paint them on a large surface.

Perhaps the fact that I wanted to see a wide sky meant that I wanted to see a wide surface.

I rechecked particularly strong papers I had. I carried a thick calligraphy brush with plenty of water and let the ink flow through the canvas, changing the direction and angle of it.

This allowed me to balance both my own artifice and the natural shapes (the flow of water) in my work.

I like to look at all kinds of small creatures in pet shops.

There are moments when I am struck by the life that resides in even the smallest of things, and at those moments I discover the preciousness and beauty of a life.

When I was looking at my drawing of the aurora streams, the image of a fish swimming in the water as if it were assimilating into there came to me.

The model for this fish comes from a very small fish like a betta or a guppy, but as it swims through the sky, its thin fins spread far and wide and its body is majestic, sprinkling it with the glitter of life. The glittering of multiple lurex inks spread out into the fine background to assist in the painting.

The painting materials are :

fountain pen ink

Diamine "Starlit sea", "Blue pearl", "Shimmering sea"

KAKIMORI "Pink lemonade", "Twincle yellow"

Pelican highlighter ink "green", "yellow".

Nakabayashi "Ukiyoe Ink series, Utamaro Ume Murasaki" and "Sunaoiro series, Daidai".

sodium hypochlorite solution