This winter, imura gallery will present a solo exhibition by Yoshimi Miyamoto.

Miyamoto works predominantly in watercolor, creating black-and-white monochrome paintings that explore the theme of light. For each painting, she blends together many different colors to create her own black, which she uses together with white paint, taking advantage of the manner in which the paints run (nijimi), and adding layer after layer. She is a highly accomplished painter, being awarded the Gotoh Cultural Award for best new talent in 2014, and taking part in the group exhibition Watercolor: The Charm of Mizue—From Meiji to Today presented in Hokkaido, Aichi, and Nara in 2017.

This exhibition at imura gallery was first presented in Tokyo in November 2021. It comprises six works by the artist in total, including additional new works. The expression of light based on white and her carefully produced black paint produces a vigor like that seen in the life cycles of plants. The geranium motifs take over the space, resulting in a highly satisfying exhibition.

－Artist Statement

In the spring of 2019, I visited the Galería Marlborough in Madrid to be shown some of the work of Antonio López García. In my attempts to capture the characteristics of light, I had eliminated color information to produce monochrome paintings, questioning again and again what it is that I actually see when I look at flowers and other objects, and attempting to create expressions of the light and other information picked up by the lens of my camera. During that process I realized that I would like to give some thought to the significance of painting in a realist manner. Antonio López García was one artist whose realist works held a particular attraction for me, and I decided to investigate what it was in his works that I found so alluring. Based on information from the Nagasaki Prefectural Museum of Art and from an acquaintance familiar with his works, I made a trip to Madrid.

At the Galería Marlborough, all I was able to see was a single work by López, painted while he was still young. Depicting a woman seated on a chair, it had little impression of being a realist painting. Instead, the woman had an air of being lost in thought.

Attempting to express the radiance of life, I have often chosen flowers as motifs. In Madrid, I was enthralled by the forms of geraniums, which were probably the flowers that I saw most of. Returning to Japan, I began a new project, beginning by growing the flowers to be painted.

Painting flowers that were still growing in pots was a new experience. In the past, I had always selected pressed flowers or preserved flowers as motifs because I could shine light on them when painting. Working with live flowers was very different. The plants in the pots changed from day to day, with flowers repeatedly blooming and withering. I found it difficult to capture them in forms that led to finished paintings. Nevertheless, painting the geraniums allowed me to see something else: a sense of life rising from them like flames, and light that glinted like moonlight.

Although gazing at the present, I am conscious of thinking about the long and continuous history of life, the universal life possessed by the flowers that have become my motifs. From time to time I recall the painting by López of the woman deep in thought.

Yoshimi Miyamoto