Winners and Nominees of Shell Art Award 2018

“Observing the self” is one of the themes of my work. This doesn't necessarily mean looking at myself in a mirror or in photos; I think self-awareness is more complex than that. The self accumulates through observing others. In addition, I am thrilled and elated that this work is going to be seen by many people through this exhibition. I hope my painting will lead to new discoveries and wonder among visitors.

At times, I observe myself as if I were another person, and feel that I'm waiting in anticipation for the next undertaking that will prevent, through the medium of painting, the observed figure from becoming a fixed interpretation.
I feel the need to verify the self here at this moment, and strive to depict awareness, varying states and circumstances that cannot be supplemented through meanings or causes. Once again, the “I” here is an observer of the self.

I have come to understand that to love someone is a very painful thing. One is helpless. Just about the only thing I can do is paint and pray.

My recent working method firstly involves the depiction of things and events that capture my attention in daily life, which are then developed in the painted surface.
Working in this way, I mostly begin by considering one of two elements: the form or the scenery. In this work, I approached the painting from its form.
At first there was only a crack, but this transformed into a body, thus providing a visual resolution to the image. In so doing, my awareness also gradually shifted to that of a bird's eye perspective, bringing the feeling that a grander theme had emerged.

I create work by directing the thoughts, feelings, and motivations in my mind toward the canvas. The creative process begins with the making of a support.
I assemble the wooden frame and prime the canvas in a manner similar to that of developing a story.
And, as if conversing with the work (still in its unfinished form), I apply paint and pencil marks.
Similar to breathing, I want to be completely immersed in the creative process.

My work is always an attempt to capture the smallest of voices, and retain them through their depiction as fragments of an image. These small voices can be understood to be the day-to-day pressure felt in the hearts of each of us, including myself. Through my work, I want to show the existence of the heart accompanied by a sense of timelessness beyond comprehension. I hope that the traces of my actions?the application of black color onto wooden board, which is then carved into directly to create the image? will resonate in the hearts of viewers.

When I make a painting, I apply paint or transfer printed materials onto the canvas, adding words and brushstrokes that act as a trigger to further develop the painting. I then select shapes, lines and colors that appear through this process in an attempt to give concrete form to the image that appears through the combination of elements. In addition, I use this kind of methodology as a means of experimentation to consider alternative ways of looking at my paintings.

Currently, I paint ideas that come to mind at random.
I first think of a rough composition in my head, and then explore it on the canvas. By doing so, it is possible to discover forms and colors I had not imagined. In addition, occasional feelings influence my paintings, making each a personal work. I sometimes use painting as a means of giving vent to the feelings in my heart.

I cannot forget those instants when connections form between what at first appear to be unrelated events, causing the visible scenery to change completely. I think that a painting is achieved at the moment when disparate elements find their correct position in the image. I strive to paint that moment when each motif transcends its own singular meaning and combines together to form a single painting. I want to re-encounter unforgettable moments through painting.

When walking outside, I cannot help but feel a sense of vividness in the unexpected glimpses of people's lives seen through windows and gaps in gardens. Such sights appear more real than reality itself. It may seem cruel to accept the dullness of the everyday, but I want to give concrete form to my feelings through my paintings.

Rather than trying to paint something from a white surface where all manner of possibilities lie hidden, I paint lines while relying on the ceaseless flow of abstract words. The object of my gaze is constantly fluctuating. I too am constantly moving as I try to paint. The image I attempt to affix to the support also begins to quiver against the surrounding ground. While not being drawn in by its movement, I quietly try to bring composure to the object by thinking that I am painting myself.

Over the last few years, I have painted flowers dedicated to those who have passed away, and this painting is a continuation of this body of work. Sometimes, these flowers personify the deceased themselves. I usually depict sunflowers or Christmas roses. The sunflower is a flower that blooms in August, the season of the dead, while the Christmas rose has an association with accounts of battlefields. I sense the existence of a past world that I have never experienced in which only flowers such as these are in bloom.

Lots of living creatures exist inside me. They are all creatures of my own creation, but they are also a part of me.

When trying to paint a picture by tracing memories, the influence of unexpected exterior elements absent from my initial thoughts and feelings come to accumulate in an unforeseen manner. Following the flow of consciousness as it struggles amidst these changes, the minor and noticeable brush marks?both successes and failures?come to accumulate in the pictorial space. As the unexpected meanings and images sought through this process come to appear on the wet surface, at times it is possible to achieve a painting whose entire surface is filled with brushstrokes resembling a veil of mist. Thus, the painterly language produced by my physical movements is complete.

I create spaces by drawing lines that respond to the flow of forms and movements of my heart.

I make paintings based on the theme of personal events and emotions that make up the “self.” This work represents me at a time when I was unable to endure a situation even when presented with a chance to escape it, leading to my flying into a rage.

I often refer to the figures I depict as “those people” or “neighbors.” Having grown up in the mountains of Nara, the sense that the forest depths are not an area we should enter is ingrained in my mind as a matter of course. I paint while conscious of this side and the “other,” as well as the boundary between them.

I painted a picture for the first time. Various things happened in my life before and after finishing it. For me, painting is a medium chosen only when I have something I want to say. It is something like a serious whim.

My job is to paint. I leave its understanding and interpretation to the viewer. The work truly reaches completion in a given moment. Is my work complete?

I examine the standard by which unconventional forms of painting are evaluated by considering the cultural history and narrative nature of painting, with the aim of creating an experience of multilayered and accessible paintings suspended between conviction and incongruity. In the work presented here, I consciously tried to diffuse the viewer's gaze by creating a circular movement within the pictorial frame through multiple perspectives and motifs, coming and going between two different methods of framing?the image seen within a frame, and the image seen on its own.

I had a feeling that, when sensing signs of war, people become endearing and beautiful as if in resistance. When contemplating this notion, I suddenly remembered a figure resembling that of Ares Borghese who, despite representing the god of war, displays beauty without wildness, and both anger and benevolence. I made this painting while contemplating that connections also exist between seemingly contradictory emotions.

It was around 29 years ago that I was born, in the first year of Heisei (1989).
The following event happened about 20 years ago. When I was a child, I entered a competition for the first time with a work titled World Cup, a collage depicting politicians from various countries who all wore turbans and whose heads I had painted brown. At the time, I couldn't understand why adults were laughing when they saw my work.
And in the fall at the end of the Heisei Era, I came to paint something similar. In other words, it is the second time in 20 years.

I make work based on the theme of resistance against “imposed harmony within society as a community.” I think we ought to welcome the existence of people (and things) beyond our control who, no matter how much love is shown, remain unresponsive and who may even show a clear aversion to such treatment. I believe people become indulgent and are corrupted by this deficiency.

I feel that trivial everyday landscapes, both in Japan and overseas, can sometimes be truly universal. I made work this year while conscious of the invisible spaces in such landscapes. Since my method of working involved installing quickly on a flat surface due to money and space restrictions, there may be a strong sense of a space being created as opposed to a more conventional method of painting.

In a former era, notions shared among a certain group expanded with occasional flashes of madness, generating a chaotic, emotional landscape. Such occurrences make people blind and lead to the loss of reason.

I took a photo of a miniature garden I created, and then made this painting while referring to the photo. The reason I inserted the media of photography into the creative process is because a photo will give the subject a sense of flatness no matter how raw the real thing is. What kind of interpretation is possible after seeing (observing) a flat image? This is what interests me, and painting is an extension of this preoccupation.

This is a picture that holds together even if a part is added or removed, or existing parts rearranged. Upon observation, one can see that while trying to arrange parts of the world other than myself in an attractive manner, I simultaneously want somehow to escape this arrangement. I'm not interested in wanting to appear in such-and-such a way, or draw to such-and-such a standard. But at the very least, I'm painting because I'm here and here exists. How much can distractions be kept to a minimum? Pretending that I don't know anything about the world outside, I draw under the pretense that I'm not at home while blatantly still being there.

This was a work made at a time when I was trying to find out what kind of painting I wanted to create, and I'm very surprised that it was selected for this competition and will be seen by many visitors. I hope I can also learn something during the exhibition.
Since this painting will lead to future works, I'm thrilled it was selected, and the experience has given me confidence.

It has been about nine years since I started living in a town with many alleyways and sightseeing spots. Events this year included an escaped convict living in hiding nearby, and the experience of waiting for two hours at a public bathhouse after the water supply had been cut off due to heavy rain. I still live there with the feeling of being an outsider, but I have come to grasp a sense of the town.

I always look upon the canvas I put in front of me as if for the first time, and I cannot repeat things depicted in other paintings. If this is always true, then it is a very precarious and frightening state of mind in comparison to consciousness in daily life. For this reason, there is a temptation to replace such feelings with what is familiar or known in advance, but I cannot do so. If I can cherish my feelings in the present, then I can be the first to encounter something like the truth of each painting.

Recently, I have an interest in three things: 1.The difference between exterior and interior born from drawing a circle with a line; 2.The boundary between “line” and “figure,” and 3.The relationship between the size of the space where the work is produced, the size of the canvas, and the movement of the body.

I have feelings of anxiety, fear and doubt when inadvertently seeing virtual images. I feel convinced and assured even when making something that is visible in real life, for example. In this sense, the process of remaking for me may constitute an error of memory and concept.

My body was mine when I was born. However, in the process of being divided into various properties such as nationality, gender, occupation, and health condition, I have gradually come to feel a sense of losing my own body.
In my case, I consider painting to be the act of trying to rediscover the lost sense of having my own body. And now that my body is mine once again, I wish to make paintings that awaken each person to the existence of their own bodies.

I make paintings by establishing a story and characters according to the motif while consolidating the image. I adopt various styles, from fully developed stories to single moments captured in a single frame.
Flower crown is a work I painted while imagining the scene of a bride stepping into a brilliant future that awaits her.

Liberated from thought  I leave my actions to another self rather than consciously applying control.

Having experienced human life and its final stages close at hand while working in welfare and medical centers, I have come to make work through a process of trial and error that adopts themes of human dignity, the preciousness and transience of life, and living and dying. Born out of the repeated drawing and accumulation of lines, my paintings are a personal daily record of feelings that cannot easily be expressed in words, while they also exist as a record of living here in this moment.
My work is imbued with the thought of wanting to cherish each moment of time passing within a limited lifespan.

Taking red thread and crows as my motif, I strive to depict that part of my heart that is poisoned.
The title “Tsuki ga kagami ni nareba yoi” (I wish the moon would become a mirror) is taken from an old folk song: “If you want to meet someone when far away, let the moon become a mirror.” I depicted a drunken woman who becomes desperate after a plan to sleepover at her date's house is abruptly cancelled.
I am fond of Japanese painting materials, and dye the Kumohada hemp paper I use with black tea so as to naturally bring out its original color and retain its beauty.

It was in 2005 or 2006 that I first applied to the Shell Art Prize. Since then, I have entered three works every year without fail. I cannot forget the excitement of being selected for the first time in 2008. I'm fortunate to have been selected again in this the final year that I am eligible to participate. My paintings are based on photos that I take myself. I hastily took the photo used for this work because I was captivated by the appearance of a walking figure with a mask on the back of his head. I wasn't sure I could make a painting from the image at the time, but I managed to do so.

The other side is burning.
I was driven to paint this image with a mixture of feelings: helplessness, unbearable irritation, dulled senses, but also a spirit of inquiry that wishes to know the true form of things, for example. The space that remains on the canvas is wholly different from the emotions that were the initial starting point. I am filled with doubt as to whether my paintings have found a way of separating themselves from their original meaning, or whether they have really confronted true essence.

Cities are a mess.

I make works that take rocks as motif, adopting the theme “what is life?” In recent years, I have come to focus on the existence of creatures and people on the periphery of rocks, and since participating in Asuka Art Village last year, I create work on the theme of “tombs.” Many old graveyards still exist in Asuka Village even today, which contain remains that have apparently been buried directly in the ground. Stronger than any image of death, I keenly felt the circulation of life in the creatures that pervade the soil, and in the sight of stones lined up in the earth as symbols.

The theme of my work is “oneness.” In order to leave a beautiful earth for future descendents, what should humans do? Have we taken too much, caused too much pollution, or used too much? I want to promote the brightness of life in living creatures through my paintings. The boundary between water and air, and things with concrete form; the boundary between concrete and abstract forms; the boundary between adults and children, and the boundary between life and death. I paint with the conviction that there is truth to be found in the boundaries between various things.

1I take approximately 100 photos a day, and of those I'm only satisfied with about four images. The pictures that weren't satisfactory consist of subjects that impressed me, but which I wasn't able to capture in the viewfinder. By replacing these images with paintings, I believe I can express my initial emotion and even something more.

When I was young, I had a longing to relate with animals as you would a partner. However in reality, birds and stray cats would slip my hands, and even dogs wouldn't take to me.
In the world of longing I express as an adult, relationships between animals and people are conveyed through others, while a distance can also be felt between the image and the viewer. This wasn't intentional, but it is very comfortable for me.

The original scene lying behind the image that emerges out of the composition of colors, the emphasis of the physical paint that prevents the subject from being revealed, and the strong presence of individual colors come to intertwine, leading to uncertainty about what one is viewing.
To see means to connect what is seen in front of you with past memories that the sight recalls, leading to recognition for the first time.
I think this experience akin to being adrift in one's thoughts, where such connections appear possible but are not always so, is necessary in a world full of things that appear to be genuine.

I consider painting to be a medium for the conveyance of something.
There are various ways of conveying messages, but I am not good at descriptive or premeditated paintings.
I painted this work as an expression of my emotions that subtly change from day to day by applying successive layers of paint as each coat dried.
As a result of obstinate thinking, the paint accumulated and distorted to create an indistinct surface. In order to organize my feelings, I scraped paint from the canvas. In so doing, various aspects of the self became visible through the layers.
I aimed to create a painting through physical interaction with the canvas itself.

In this painting, I mixed black and white paint at the point where a film had formed on the paint's surface so as to prevent the colors from blending with one another. The specific weight of black and white paint is different, with black paint possessing greater weight. If one uses a pouring technique so that the paint gathers like a puddle on the surface, the black paint will move to the deeper recesses, while the white paint will move to the shallow area. Where does the boundary exist between them?

The soft skin, measured breathing and fortitude of a close friend; the air and light produced by the surrounding trees. I don't have a particular concept, but I try to capture such moments as the brush moves and the paint spreads across the canvas.
Is it only me who feels beauty when contradictory things exist together at the same instant, and a unique space is created?
I hope that her quiet beauty, which can make one forget the bustle of people, and this soft, light and vivid summer scent and light will be conveyed to the viewer.

The bud opens, and the scent soon disperses.
It is impossible to tell if it has finished or just begun. When standing in front of the mirror, I think of continuation as a thing of sadness.

As an abstract painter, I use colors and forms to express human relationships, conversations, landscapes and other impressions from memory.
This work portrays the complex aspects of human relations?the drama of tragedy and comedy intertwining.
In addition, I always strive to share with the viewer the positive energy my paintings possess.

I heard that the origin of the Chinese character for 'write' (書く, pronounced kaku) originates in the Chinese character for 'scratch' (掻く, also pronounced kaku).
Scratching is the primitive act of carving letters into stones and trees using fingernails. For example, a bear that leaves its claw marks on a tree is also marking its territory, conveying its existence to other living creatures in the area. Come to think of it, perhaps the graffiti left by people when sightseeing are the remnants of such an instinct to mark territory.
I think this work is also a type of marking. It is simply an attempt to preserve repeated acts of erasure and applications of paint. Taking form in due course, 　　begins to emerge.

A scene while traveling.
Ultimately, it is solely my responsibility to convey in words the memory of seeing her?an event that will never be repeated?while it is also a phenomenon of this world to be able to perceive things with real feelings.
It is self-evident that one cannot say anything if one has only passed something by.
I am simply trying to somewhere preserve things that can only be seen from the perspective of an onlooker, preventing them from being lost or damaged.

This work depicts a character of my own creation, portrayed drifting in the sky above a village in France. The created character is a projection of myself, and it expresses a journey to find my place of origin. I want to create works with unique expression that combine aspects of traditional painting acquired in Japan with the contrasting smoothness of animated images.

At first, I wanted to draw a positive picture. (For me, the yellow object you see in the painting is a sweater). The painting is an indulgent work in which I entrust my actions to my feelings, flipping sides and flying away, deforming and freewheeling. Appraising an emotion by placing it in the room, it is a work that interacts with the space, moving to and fro.