Beginnings
Romance (2017) is an abstract painting, which represents an emotional state. I have always drawn eyes and over the years, I began to create pieces entirely made of eyes.
In 2012, when I lived in Paris, I spent a long time on the metro every day. To pass the time, I would take out my sketch pad and draw eye landscapes, in place of real eye contact. Some of these I meticulously coloured by hand, but many I left in black and white.
None of the compositions were planned. Rather, they were intended to be a visual representation of how I was feeling.
Obsession
I filled many sketchbooks with eye images and still find myself sketching this way, in order to unwind and unravel the knots of my mind.
By 2014, I moved to Tokyo and continued to create art on the impressively busy Toyko subway system.
My daily commute consisted of eight trains, so as I had done in Paris, I constantly drew eyes.
The images I drew at that time were in monotone and had almost no white space. This was a reflection of the population density around me.
I wanted to capture the sense of claustrophobia I was experiencing and to depict the frantic pace of the environment around me.
I had the sensation of being watched by millions of eyes. This can be seen in the drawings I created.
Original art
In Romance (2017), I painted with my instincts and used a palette incorporating a mix of warm and cool colours.
When I paint a portrait with acrylic paint, I build layers of colour to create skin tone, as can be seen in Self-Portrait (2001-2017).
However, in Romance (2017), I only applied almost translucently thin colour to create a lighter, ethereal effect.
It felt liberating to paint according to feeling, and to really play with the creation of this image.
For me, Romance (2017), is a painting that encapsulates happiness and the promise of good times to come.