I want to express flowers blooming in the garden, children playing, and warm moments of daily life.

Everyone has darkness and light. I draw darkness in order to draw light. I want to give form to myself or my desire through the scenery and animals I encounter in my daily life.

Hiroki Kishimoto (b. 1982) has developed his own unique world of Japanese-style painting, which is not too much bound by the framework of Japanese-style painting, but also adds the realism of Western-style painting. Since his grandfather was a Japanese painter in the Seiryusha (a Showa-era Japanese painting organization formed in 1929 by Ryuko Kawabata, a Japanese painter), painting with Japanese painting materials from his childhood was a fun and playful time for him, and he naturally became attracted to the world of painting. While using Japanese painting materials, I was also attracted to the centripetal realism of Antonio Lopez Garcia, a favorite of mine when I was a student, and I have somehow come to aim for a new frontier of Japanese painting, which is a fusion of the anti-realism of Kaii Higashiyama and his anthemic imagery. I am often attracted to relief-like structures and alleyways in foreign countries (mainly in Europe), and I depict not only the sce

I always have the same theme at the bottom of my heart. It is to express what people cannot see and cannot express, such as space, air, time, and distance. I always try to depict the colorless transparency that exists between the eye and the object, rather than using objects as a medium for unrealistic expression.

I make it based on “curiosity”. It may be an act of trying to unravel the “why?” There, such as animals, women, flowers, shapes, colors, life, memories, time, and invisible things.

Using iwa-enogu (mineral pigments) and metallic mud and foil, the motifs of flora and fauna are expressed in the style of old ink paintings. Please look at the expression of Japanese painting today.

In Japanese painting, it is said that “line” is important. However, there are no “contour lines” because all visible things are three-dimensional. Lines” are created when we recognize the shape of objects, but I think they are very ambiguous things that can be greatly changed by different viewing angles and situations. I think that the reason why I draw pictures is to leave a moment of something that is always changing through the filter of myself. Yuka Taguchi HP https://www.yukataguchi.com/

My aim is to create paintings that incorporate a contemporary perspective by layering images of natural phenomena such as the sky and water over themes that have been depicted since ancient times, such as the moon, flowers, and living creatures. I would like to create works that give a sense of abstraction within the figurative, and through sensory interpretation, give a sense of Japanese aesthetics. Junya Tsubota HP http://www.junyarts.net/

Using women and cats as motifs, I create my works with an emphasis on the inner world and presence that can be sensed through the casual expressions and gestures of everyday life.

When I turn the calendar around, there is always a new landscape there. I am glad to go through several seasons, as if something I had forgotten comes back to my heart. There is light, shadow, and color in the wind that brushes my cheek. And I want to capture something like a fragrance in the landscape. I want to draw the heart of nature.   Mikiko Noji HP http://nojimikiko.jp/

Makoto Fujii (b. 1984) creates works on the theme of “Japanese realism”, which is neither Japanese nor Western painting, and is at once new and nostalgic. Just as Impressionist painters were once inspired by Japanese ukiyoe and pioneered new expressions, Fujii is once again seeking a fusion of Japan and the West in the modern age. He chooses “water” as a motif to depict the shimmering formless things with oil paint, and continues to paint them because he is attracted by the fascination and figurative beauty of the way they change every time he paints them. It has become an important existence for the artist who aims to express the feeling of formless things that sway in the wind and change color depending on the light. I want to create works of art that will be treasured by people in the future, when they find them hundreds of years after my death, in a completely different language and culture. I want to express the universal strength that lies

I mainly create works using cats and people as motifs. I hope I could touch someone’s heartstrings by sublimating what I am attracted to and what I find fragile and beautiful into my works through my own filter.   Masaaki Hikita HP http://www.masaakihikida.com/

The theme that I express by copperplate engraving is “Small happiness”. I draw “the story of small life” by overlapping it with small animals, plants and flowers. I am healed and encouraged by the gestures and expressions of animals. They gently remind me that there are important things in the activities we repeat so naturally that we don’t even notice.

Seeking the ultimate beauty, I will strive to draw pictures that everyone will be overwhelmed to see so that I can draw beautiful and bewitching women. I hope to express the unfathomable charm of women through my paintings.

When I paint a picture, my own feeling is that it is similar to an excavation process. When I paint the center of a picture, the colors for the other four corners have already been decided. It is also a work like grasping a vague memory in my hand. It seems contradictory, but surprisingly it is not so. Like digging in the earth, I add paint layer by layer as if scooping out water.

I mainly paint still life with fruits and flowers. What I put in a picture is the beauty of color with power that shines vividly with harmony and balance. Each motif has a solid presence. I aim to create an atmospheric world of color by depicting the light that seems to pour into the picture plane and the soft light that cloaks it like a veil. I want to draw pictures that draw you in and make you want to keep looking at them. Izumi Kawamoto blog http://decorativeartist.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/

I continue to paint water as a motif. This is because I am fascinated by the mystery and power of life-giving water. In my paintings, both the rich curves and the legal straight lines created by nature are equally encompassed in one organic world. Flowers, goldfish, and seaweed are also depicted as happy symbols around water, and I want to infuse my work with the aesthetic and fundamental sense of color that they reflect in the water. Kaoru Kan HP https://www.kaorukan.com/

He paints landscapes that depict a quiet sense of rhythm in a classical style, and prestigious still life paintings that depict his unique world view. Sota Koike HP https://www.koikesota.com/

A momentary time that does not stay in this world but flickers transiently. A landscape that contains the presence of people and universal light, and that transfers and permeates. There are times when I question what it means to live in such moments. I create my works in the hope that you can feel the precious time in each of the landscapes I express. Yumi Yamazaki HP http://www.yamazakiyumi.com/profile/