A painted flower shop

Besides being a painter when I was a child, my other dream was to become a florist. Once upon a time, there was a small flower shop nearby my house, and the young woman florist who sold flowers was so pretty and elegant. She always wore a dress that looked like artwork with flower patterns, and she always smiled whenever I had eye contact with her. Everyone in the world was busy eating and living, and life seemed like a battlefield, but somehow I felt that the flower shop was a different world, like a paradise. Is it the reason I received a little comfort from flowers in a difficult life? I have loved flowers since then. However, now I know that even the inside of the flower shop was like a field of thorns.

Still, I may have wanted to live as pretty and elegantly as the florist in the messy reality. So art was like a flower shop to me in that sense. The world is full of envy, jealousy, pain, and sorrow, but the pictures in the frame are always beautiful.

When I was in Germany, I visited a special exhibition of Japanese photographers in ZKM. the artist took the photos close-up of the street after the Fukushima disaster. Through the production, the artist conveyed the message that Fukushima's nuclear explosion and the world collapsed, but the sea was still beautiful and calm. In a world where beauty and pain coexist, he says he thought about what art is. The situation that it is challenging to make the disaster the subject of art has remained unchanged. But I believe that the intention to show the world as it is changing the world little by little. It is hard to talk about pressures such as political, economic, and very personal forces at play.

@ Ken Kato

Anyway, I didn't become a florist, but I would often present a picture of flowers to someone to show my appreciation in exchange. This painting was given as a gift to a professor who helped my husband study for a long time and became a good mentor.

I will still never forget the pure and clear eyes he showed me when he received the picture as small as the palm of his hand. He truly knows the joy and comfort of art and has since become a major customer of my pictures. Even though I drew pictures with intentions and inner meanings that I did not tell anyone, he used to guess the secret intentions right away. One of the reasons why I was able to paint without letting go of the brush is because of customers who have this kind of sense.

My flower shop doesn't sell real flowers. If you don't throw it away on purpose, it won't wither instead and stay with you for a long time. But instead of feeling no energy anymore when the flower withers, the painting flower will still retain many feelings. I started a project called The Painter's Flower Shop. I draw only one flower with acrylic on this white A4 sized paper.

The flowers painted there look painful because their stems are twisted, and shadows are everywhere. However, from a distance, it is still a single flower. Beautiful, like our life.