Artful Illuminations

Originally inspired by light shining through the delicate shoji screens of 
my traditional Japanese house in Tokyo, I started to experiment with light 
and ‘Washi’ paper, combining brush strokes with a cut collage technique.
The backlit colors are reminiscent of stained glass, but the texture and 
translucency of the paper give a feeling of weightlessness, the idea of 
depth without weight is appealing to me.

I am also intrigued by the dark embracing the light, the inseparable shadow. 
The paradoxical co-existence between clarity and ambiguity ---- clear-cut 
images of undefined gender and indistinct origin, the strangely beautiful 
but disturbingly unfamiliar. The fascination of faces that reveal, and masks 
that conceal the inner depths, the intrigue of hands that entwine, holding 
the potential to caress, create, heal or destroy.

Only in the realm of myth and dreams do we accept the half human, the 
changeling, the androgynous deities of the east with their many hands and 
multifaceted faces, images that embody both the beautiful and the terrible, 
the light and the dark.