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Artwork Description

Storied traditions in the indigenous type of Japanese painting called Nihonga, placing emphasis on uniquely Japanese materials, techniques and conventions, have thrived in Japan for nearly 1,000 years, and continues into the present. Yet its present incarnation is often mired in the idolization of Western materials and subject matter, and the differences between Western oil painting and Nihonga have been greatly convoluted, with an inability to distinguish one from another. It is within this context that the emergence of Ayane Mikagi (b. 1988 –), one of the brightest young painters of Nihonga, can be understood, who, along with her contemporaries, are trying to create a new wave of Japanese painting for the 21st century, with an exhilarating zeitgeist focusing on traditional Japanese techniques yet placing emphasis on innovative methods of abstraction never before featured or focused within the medium. Winning a slew of awards since 2012 and already placed in three public collections in Japan, Mikagi’s paintings are at once evocative, luscious and emphatic, and are most often idyllic landscapes of nature, controlled and painted carefully in layered emotion. Yet it is her floral paintings that have garnered attention for blurring the lines between the purely figurative and the abstract, and lead to kaleidoscopes of colour that pop, impress and melt into techni-colored fantasia.