Akihiro Miwa has a book called Aa Seifu no Hosoku (The Law of Positive and Negative, Parco Publishing). Its way of thinking is one of the foundations of how I paint.
This world is made of positive and negative
Miwa writes that this world is made up of the positive and the negative. If there is a minus, there is always a plus somewhere too. He describes the earth as made of "light and shadow."
When you go through a painful experience, it can become an element that brings happiness later. Conversely, after a run of good things, a period like paying a bill will come. It is a view in which things balance out like a pendulum.
Akihiro Miwa is a singer and actor from Nagasaki who has lived a life full of upheaval. The book is said to have been written from that lived experience.
Painting without erasing the shadows
When I paint for someone, I do not try to pick out only their good sides and wrap them up neatly.
The hard times and the experiences that did not go well are also part of what shapes that person. If I paint over them, it is no longer their painting.
What a painting can do in the negative times
If the law of positive and negative is true, then even in the negative times there must be a sprout of the positive somewhere. But when you are in the middle of such a time, it is hard to see.
I think a painting can be a tool that keeps that "hard-to-see sprout of the positive" in visible form. Hung on the wall, it comes into view even on difficult days.
I think of Mermaid nao's commissioned art as work that creates a painting containing both your light and your shadow.
Sources
Parco Publishing (Aa Seifu no Hosoku)
Fujin Koron.jp (Akihiro Miwa: "This world is built on the law of positive and negative; if there is a minus, there is always a plus")
Seigow Matsuoka, Senya Sensatsu No. 530 (Aa Seifu no Hosoku, Akihiro Miwa)
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