Mari MOCHIZUKI
Preface |
Among one of my works, there is a picture titled “Secret Emotion/ LA PASSIONE SEGRETA” which is a picture that portrays a window in the Trastevere district of Rome.
In ancient cities, there are many windows and walls that look as if they have watched over the lives of the people with time and history soaked deeply inside them, giving off a slightly spooky feel. Particularly, I have found “windows” to be very attractive because of their two-sidedness with an inside and an outside, and had often come to select them as motifs.
It was just at the time when this “LA PASSIONE SEGRETA” was 80 % completed, and my exhibition was only two months away, that the 9.11 simultaneous terror attacks occurred.
When this dreadful tragedy took place in the city where my friends and acquaintances lived, in the city that I had visited in the past, I became terribly confused, and was seized with such a sense of helplessness that I became unable to draw.
Day by day, the world was moving rapidly into a direction that was slightly out of touch with the people’s sentiments, and I had never thought so much about what I could draw and what I could do with my drawings as much as that time.
Consequently, I came up with the thought that in my exhibition only two months away, I will portray, in some way, what I can of the “present”, and decided to alter the picture that I had been working on till then.
The part where I had drawn a salmon-pink wall typical to Rome, I colored it over in white and placed a white flower by the windowsill as a requiem.
I titled this picture, “Secret Emotion/ LA PASSIONE SEGRETA,” and in the pendant work “Sky-Blue Memories/ LA MEMORIA CELESTE,” I perched a white dove on the old window motif.
While these two pieces, on the surface, may just look like drawings of a quiet Italian landscape, they also turned out to be drawings that depicted the complex feelings inside me such as grief, anger, prayers, repose of souls, all of which could only be expressed and drawn into my pictures at that certain time.
A representational picture, yet not a representational picture…
By carefully drawing the motifs that captivate my heart,
I will keep on drawing the “present” that only I can draw.
That was the period that gave me these thoughts.
|
Profile |
| 1966 |
Born in Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan |
| 1991 |
Graduated from the Japanese Painting Course, Faculty of Fine Arts,
Tokyo University of the Arts
|
| Solo Exhibitions |
| 2001 |
“Recollections of Rome” Exhibition / G-art Gallery（Ginza, Tokyo） |
| 2003 |
“Le Finestre/ Windows” Exhibition / G-art Gallery（Ginza, Tokyo） |
| Group Exhibitions, etc. |
| 1990 |
Group Exhibition / Imperial Gallery (Jiyugaoka, Tokyo), etc. |
| 1994 |
Accepted for the Ueno Royal Museum Grand Prize Exhibition (The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo)
|
| |
Stayed in Rome, Italy until 1995. |
| 2002 |
Korea-Japan Art Exchange Exhibition /
Korean Culture Center Gallery, Korean Embassy in Japan (Azabu, Tokyo)
|
| |
Group Exhibition / Key Gallery (Ginza, Tokyo) |
| |
Small Works Exhibition / G-art Gallery (Ginza, Tokyo) |
| 2003 |
Accepted for the Japanese Painting Competition in Aogaki (Aogaki City, Hyogo Prefecture; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto; The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo) |
| |
Group Exhibition / G-art Gallery（Ginza, Tokyo） |
| 2005 |
Small Works Exhibition / Ono Gallery (Kyobashi, Tokyo) , etc. |
| Activities as an Illustrator |
| 2005 |
Exhibition of Small Works / mimi Lotus (Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture) |
PAGE
TOP