Hanami
What better announcement of spring coming than blossom blooming. What better place of observing sakura (cherry blossom)- hanami or plum blossom – umemi, than Japan. In this kacho-e I tried to capture and preserve hanami with sakura on 90-100%, a moment when you observe branches individually. I used my sakura flower approach that has delivered childish- cartoonish- 2D effect, which, with multiple layers, has this whimsical, charming and joyful sensation. A proper Japanese word would be KAWAII!
Technique: mixed media (acrylic on glass, PVC cel, canvas with wooden frame)
Size: 36,5 x 46,5 x 5,7 cm (15.74 x 15.74 inch)
Year: February 2019
Availability: In Private Collection
Diorama
This series of kacho-e (pictures of birds, flowers and insects) is inspired by Japanese cel animation and tradition of omocha-e (kumiage-e) / tatebanko. Recently I have experienced a joy of painting on plexiglass surface and this very much reminded me of transferring drawing on animation cel and coloring it. When I received a set of cels from anime in 2016, I almost had a chance to make a composition of 3 layers of cels from Arcadia of My Youth: Endless Orbit SSX, but two got stuck together, and I couldn´t separate them without damage. I wanted to experiment a little bit with PVC cel. The second source of influence comes from tatebanko (ancient setting), 2.5D paper craft diorama, that originally comes from omocha-e (paper toy for children), that could be a print of board game to diorama setting – kumiage-e, popular in late Edo period. Kumiage-e (building up pictures) is ukiyo-e print that was sold as a set for diorama of kabuki scene and they originated from paper crafted scenes for kabuki theatre and toy theatre. Tatebanko is quite popular in Japan, and the scenes can be either very easy to build (featuring characters like Hello Kitty-chan), to really complex dioramas of buildings and houses.