Shaped by a life between Japan and Britain, I work in painting and in the creative direction of spaces. Through video and writing, I share the research and thinking behind my work.
I am taking the stillness I grew up with in Japan, seeing it again through my own eyes, and bringing it to life in other countries and cultures, in forms rooted in the nature and culture of each place.
Like sitting in a garden in Kyoto: time loosens, and your mind begins to move quietly. Your senses slowly return, and simply being there becomes enough. Within the stillness there is human warmth, and a connection to the culture and nature of the place. It is difficult to leave, and it stays with you quietly after you have gone.
In the midst of modern life, I hope such places can help people return to what truly matters.
A Monet in Madrid
In a museum in Madrid, I stood before a painting by Monet, unable to move. I could not explain why it held me. I only knew that I could not walk away.
Since that day, I have wanted my own work to reach someone as deeply as that painting reached me.
A few years before that, in my mid-twenties, I had left Japan, where I was born and raised, for Britain. I wanted to see what I was capable of beyond my own country. There was no concrete plan, only that wish.
In Britain, art was part of everyday life. The people I met came from all sorts of backgrounds, spoke frankly about art in their own words, and treated it as something close at hand. Encouraged by that environment, I began to paint.
At the time, I could not express myself in English as I wished, and I struggled to find my way into the community around me. As my words failed, I seemed to lose my confidence, and with it the outline of who I was. With every door closed, painting became a way to connect with people and express myself without language. Art saved me then.
From London to Kyoto
I fell deeper and deeper into painting. I worked full time, went to the studio in the evenings, and painted late into the night.
Frustrated that nothing came as easily as it had in Japan, I grew more and more determined to establish myself in London. At some point that urgency turned into a hunger for recognition, and I began to care more about how I was seen than about what I truly wanted to make.
When I received permanent residency in the UK, I left my full-time job in London and spent a while travelling through the south of France and Italy. But I could not fully enjoy the freedom I had finally earned. Not working, I began to feel that restlessness again.
Soon afterwards, I returned to Japan, intending to stay only briefly. And yet, before going back to my family home, I had already rented a flat in Kyoto.
I visited gardens and temples, and spent time with the light, the empty space, the materials, and the quiet presence of nature in old architecture. I called on craftspeople and listened to how they spoke about their work.
Immersed in the stillness and harmony of Japan, I felt senses I had almost lost in my hurried London life beginning to return. Like outlines emerging in dim light, what I wanted to care for came little by little into view.
I had planned to return to London. Instead, almost without noticing, I was drawn into the depth of a Japan I was seeing anew.
Research and Process
Moving between Japan and London, I share the encounters and research behind my work, and the way my thinking deepens through them, in video and writing.
The stories I hear from master craftspeople, of customs now quietly disappearing, are treasures to me. Following the questions that grow out of those encounters and my own curiosity, I put into words what is worth valuing, and worth believing in, today.
My hope is that these films and essays become a place where people of a similar sensibility, across countries and generations, can meet and feel at ease with one another.
Towards Space
And now, the medium I want to devote my life to is space itself.
Space draws me because it can speak to the senses quietly and deeply: not only through what is seen, but through sound, scent and touch.
Alongside my painting, I travel across Japan, visiting architecture and gardens and calling on craftspeople, gathering research and shaping concepts for spaces of my own. I am working to carry what I find there into real places, where people can come and spend time.
What I received from Monet that day will, I hope, find its way to someone else, through the spaces yet to come.
