In composing art, I reference and recreate a range of stylistic and other elements including from Japanese art, and particularly in the styles of the Rimpa school, Kano school and traditional Japanese painting. Patterns, history, and thought are things the shaping of which is heavily dependent on a given locale and environment. Therefore, I think that by consciously making such references, it is possible to create pictures that only a contemporary Japanese person could paint.

 

  Simplification is an especially Japanese mode of expression. Examples include the invention by Japanese more than 1,000 years ago of the hiragana syllabary of unique symbols created through the simplification of Chinese characters. In the Kamakura Period, too, there was the emergence of the concept of wabi-sabi through the adoption and simplification of Zen Buddhism originated by Bodhidharma. I also think about the extent to which I can create a work that is my own, amid modern and later styles with the value they place on drawing from life, and on materials.

 

  I create pictures composed in today's Japan by discovering new meaning within the styles of traditional Japanese painting, and in simplification such as the one-stroke sketch of a flower that is a part of the culture of the fude ink brush.