My mother was a kimono
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Photo by Anthony Fisher |
maker. She must have sewn thousands of kimonos throughout her life. She liked to put new ideas on her kimonos and accessories. Her work was unique. She could have been a good fashion designer if she had lived in my time. She died in 1991, aged 83 years.
My father was an electrical engineer, until he retired aged 72 years. He worked for Tokyo Electricity. He designed and drew high tension towers and cables on power stations. He died in 1998 aged 92.
Those brought up in the harbour city of Yokohama dreamed of the land over the sea. I used to watch ships come and go between two lighthouses, one red, the other white. I still remember the feeling of excitement seeing ships disappear on the horizon. A foreign country was not necessarily England. I only realised how I connected with England after I came in 1977 for a six month visit.
Yokohama was the model city of Japan when the country opened to the world in the nineteenth century. We still have many brick buildings from that time. Some of the red bricks must have come from Derbyshire more than a hundred years ago. I loved to paint those buildings near the harbour when I was young.
My first visit to England was in the spring to autumn of 1977. I had a chance to see the parade of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee at St. James’ Park, and I joined street parties around Richmond, where I stayed. It was a warm summer, people were happy. It seemed to me that all the country was well groomed, flowers on trees, birds and animals where they should be, in the bright sunshine. And somehow I felt I had seen it all before.
There was often a school trip to a cinema when I was in primary school. After we saw Disney’s Alice in Wonderland’ the teacher told us to draw impressions from the film. What I drew was not so imaginative for someone who was to become an artist. It was the scene of Alice reading a book with her sister under the tree in the park. Now I know what attracted me was not the story, but the surroundings, flowers on trees in the park.
When I was a child my favourite picnic place was called “My Secret Garden”. It was part of the gardens of the British army cemetery, only walking distance from my home. It was in the passage between large fields of graves, a space empty of graves enclosed by wildly flowering roses, exotic bushes with tiny flowers everywhere. The only sound was the birds singing. I saw the queen and prince Phillip at the cemetery when they visited in the late 70‘s.
About Painting
I have studied and worked mainly on oil painting since I was very young, through I came to London to study printmaking and etching. I had a good few years of work and a few exhibitions before I moved to Derbyshire.
Here, surrounded by beautiful countryside, I do not need to go far to find subjects to paint. I just enjoy capturing it all.
People ask what my origins are. I studied western art from the beginning, so my use of media, and philosophy of art are not much different from artists in this country. The difference is in what I paint.
During the beginning of 2000, I wanted to celebrate my own tradition, in my own way. I started to exhibit paintings using Japanese images, as I have these images naturally within me. All I have to do is brush freely with focus. These paintings now take over from the landscapes of Derbyshire.
As I still love to paint landscapes, I may continue the series “Images of Japan” until I find images that truly come from me, either with Japanese motifs or not.
Japan is changing. So am I. I move on.