Sho

Being an international individual has helped me to think globally and made me aware of how to make paintings that will potentially communicate with many people of the world regardless of their cultural background. While I embrace our personal uniqueness, I seek collective humanity in all we share.

My work analyzes how technological advances influence our life and mind. My painting deals with artificiality, materiality, complexity, brightness, richness, and the intensity of contemporary urban life. A basic theme is how one’s sense of self as an individual seems lost in our constantly expanding society. Each individual seems to become an anonymous member of a vast crowd in cities today. I am concerned with how the material richness of society can bring mental and spiritual richness in some ways, but how it can also have the opposite effect.

As a child I was fascinated with orchids. I joined the Osaka Orchid Society as the youngest member when I was twelve. Orchid hybridization showed me how the colors and shapes of nature may be manipulated to create new and beautiful forms. By analyzing the forms of living things, I am realizing that every line of every species has a specific purpose. This awakening to the visual world has led to my interest in painting.

Similarly, I am especially interested in the way invisible ultraviolet light becomes visible in the form of fluorescent colors. I am seeking ways to capture some of the effects of fluorescent light and how to express these effects in pigment colors for my paintings. My latest paintings use acrylic paints and powdered pigments, and I have experimented with wax as a way of creating a variety of textures. Through the use of multiple perspectives in combination with colors that visually advance or recede, spaces are created that constantly shift in relation to the picture plane. The best of my recent paintings have a tapestry-like aspect, weaving organic forms with geometric spaces and shapes, metaphorically suggesting the technological world vs. the spontaneity of my own human sensitivity.