Artist Statement（English / Final）
Yasunori Sakakibara
I am a painter who works across cities, cultures, and layers of time.
Born in Japan and trained in Tokyo, my artistic practice has been shaped by long-term engagement with Southeast Asia, India, and Guam. Rather than belonging to a single national or stylistic tradition, my work emerges from movement—between places, histories, and states of consciousness.
My paintings often depict cities and landscapes without human faces.
Yet human presence is central. Fear, solitude, memory, joy, and resilience are embedded in architecture, streets, light, and shadow. I paint cities, but what I seek to reveal is human psychology—the instability, vulnerability, and quiet strength that define our inner lives.
Technically, my work is grounded in a deep study of Northern Renaissance painting, including layered oil techniques and egg tempera traditions. I am drawn to methods that require time, patience, and accumulation. These techniques allow light to emerge from within the image, creating a sense of depth where one scene seems to contain another beneath it.
At the same time, my practice is strongly influenced by Buddhist art and philosophy, particularly its sense of silence, meditation, and transcendence. When I use Buddhist motifs, they are not religious symbols but existential questions—about freedom, impermanence, and the human desire to go beyond visible reality.
Cities such as Tokyo, Kolkata, Bangkok, and locations like Guam appear repeatedly in my work. These places are not treated as documentary subjects but as living, myth-like spaces where history, memory, and contemporary life intersect. Each canvas functions as a pan-focused field, where center and periphery hold equal importance, and multiple narratives coexist.
I aim to create paintings that are not driven by trends or technology, but by time. My goal is to make works that can endure—paintings that will continue to speak a hundred years from now, even as styles and tools change. Ultimately, I hope my work offers viewers a path toward an inner, quiet freedom: a space to walk through with their own memories, uncertainties, solitude, and strength.
