"I want to understand the world more deeply. By being able to do so, I may be able to understand more beautiful things."
Although it might sound simple, this desire to see more beautiful things is the basic motivation for my work.
For an artist like me who has origins in Japanese painting, the idea of drawing from nature has been a helpful hint for searching ways to understand the world. I start by copying what I see, and strive to find the relationship between things in order to discover the ways in which the world exists. This is the most basic policy for my current work.
I have a young daughter and feel that bringing her up has given me an opportunity to recognize the world once again. Through my daily life I have started to depict what my daughter views and feels, and have been trying to draw the actual existence itself. Being able to draw the various ways of existing gives me a hint to understand the world more deeply.
What does it mean to be here and to exist? When you encounter people, sometimes you feel a shape and scenery that symbolizes their existence. It might be a physical feature or behavior, words and atmospheric elements that are all bundled to become the shape of their soul. To create a painting by drawing these human-like and scenery-like shapes and how their situation interrelates over a vague boundary makes it possible to exist in an unrecognized dimension.
This is also a means to touch upon the mysteries of existence. Perhaps there must be a beautiful truth that I am longing to see."
Natsuki Urushihara
