Hello everyone. To get right to the point, I recently visited Anjin-sensei's studio and picked up "Hanako and Teky-chan," the series of oil paintings he has been working on with such great energy this summer.
They are incredibly impactful paintings, and with their use of the same red as his colored series, they possess a truly funky quality. Anjin-sensei mentioned that he felt the urge to paint again for the first time in a while. Looking at these works—and although it is strange for someone like me with no talent for painting to say so—it felt as though "he creates pottery because he has his painting, and it is precisely because he has his pottery that he returns to painting."
As he explained, creating his colored series would be impossible without the power to compose a painting. It seems to me that various elements—painting, pottery, three-dimensional sculpture, antique ceramics, and the tea ceremony—all melt together within his very being, much like the paints on this canvas, allowing him as a single artist, "Anjin," to put forth various forms of art, whether two-dimensional or three-dimensional.
I had the opportunity to hear many stories from Anjin-sensei once again, which was a very sobering yet thoroughly enjoyable experience. As is always the case, while I feel quite humble when meeting such brilliant artists, it is also a thrilling and exciting time that I find hard to contain. I still have much to learn, but I hope to continue meeting many different artists and keep refining my own path.
(I hope to share photos of the sensei's studio again soon...)