Work of Fumiyo Yoshikawa "A World of a Chld"

Artist Statement

There is a saying in Japanese, “to learn about the past is to discover the future”. I recreate my childhood by painting my daughter and in this way I am able to better understand who I am now.  For a number of years I have been painting the world and dreams of children. Since I gave birth to my daughter, Madoka, in 2005, I have painted Madoka’s sleeping face and what I imagined she was dreaming.
For me, dreaming is a symbol of the accumulated memories and the subconscious of a person. Since my daughter has grown older, I have been inspired by the way she experiences, sees and thinks about the world around her. Children sometimes can see strange, mysterious and subtle things that adults no longer can see or have forgotten how to see due to their past experiences and prejudices. By carefully observing my daughter, I remember my own childhood and that helps me regain the special sensitivity that I had when I was a little girl. When I think of the time I was a child, I remember that I saw many colorful circles and spirals when I closed my eyes in bed. The circles and spirals were floating in a space that was sometimes like a dark sea and sometimes like a sunny and bright sky. For me spirals and circles are symbols of a dream, a mysterious world, and of my childhood. Using subtle colors, effective lines and empty spaces, which are part of traditional Japanese art, my paintings embody a world seen through the eyes of a child.

March 11, 2012