"When you meet the person you were meant to meet, in the place you were meant to go, you become more than you ever imagined."
Strength is not completed in solitude. Our deepest strength is drawn out in relationships, and people can go beyond themselves through "the warm energy of love." A painting made with that thought.
The Feeling in This Work
For those who, having lived their own lives through, have their future opened toward an even greater self by meeting someone. Art for those who are already independent and able to stand on their own feet, yet have somewhere in their hearts been seeking the "connection" and "resonance" that lie beyond that strength.
The time you walked alone and the responsibilities you kept choosing were never wasted. It was born to stay beside you and affirm you.
Concept & Background
We have often believed strength to be "the power to endure" or "the power to overcome loneliness." But true strength is born in meeting someone, in touching someone's presence, in the "between." This work depicts the moment when the unseen emotional energy of love and gratitude opens a person's awareness and turns into the power to move life forward.
Technique, Color & Visual Expression
The orange, red and gold spreading across the whole canvas, with fine touches of blue and green, express emotions, memories and the presence of others overlapping. With no clear outlines or center, the composition, in which colors melt, bleed and overlap into one another, symbolizes relationships between people themselves. This is not a painting of an "individual" but of "the field that relationships create."
On Making This Work
I wanted to leave, not in words but in color and energy, the sense of change that surely happens within you when you meet someone. Strength is born not at the end of time spent carrying everything alone, but in the moment you receive someone's presence.
May it stay close to each viewer's "memories of meeting" and "experiences of being supported," and become a chance to notice the strength already within you.
The same work cannot be delivered again, but with Personal Order Art, I paint a one-of-a-kind work just for you through a conversation with each person.About using the artwork
More about this painting
A study of happiness that has lasted more than 85 years
Harvard University is home to one of the longest-running studies of human life in the world: the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
Begun in 1938, it has followed the lives of 724 men — Harvard students and boys who grew up in inner-city Boston — over many decades. Work, marriage, health, friendships: every two years they answered questions, and their physical health was checked again and again. Today, their children's generation has joined the study too.
What it found: the importance of connection
The biggest lesson from this long study is that warm relationships, more than money or fame, keep people happier and healthier.
The psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, who directs the study, has said that "good relationships keep us happier and healthier." People who felt more connected to family, friends and community tended to be happier and physically healthier, while those who felt lonely were more likely to see their mental and physical health decline.
The study also reports that people who felt they could rely on their partners in hard times kept their memories sharper as they aged.
Strength is born between people
In "Where Strength Is Born," I did not draw clear outlines or a center. The colors melt into each other, bleed and overlap. Orange, red, gold and faint blue and green represent emotions, memories and the presence of others layering over one another.
When we think of strength, we often imagine the power to do everything alone. But true strength may be born in the space where people touch one another.
A painting that holds the presence of others
A painting in a room where family gathers, or a place where friends spend time together, quietly watches over the time people share there.
I hope that each time you see this painting, you remember the people who support you.
Sources
Harvard Study of Adult Development (official site)
Robert Waldinger (What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness, TED, 2015)
Harvard Gazette (Good genes are nice, but joy is better, 2017)
¥83,000
tax, frame & domestic shipping included
shipping outside Japan: flat ¥8,000
approx. USD $550
A one-of-a-kind original painting.
