"What does your life remember?"
If heaven's wish is "you," then what is it that pulses within you? When your life answers that resonance, the world you live in will also change its course. "When that sound dwells in life, the soul resounds within and fills the heavens."
The Feeling in This Work
For those who want to discern what truly matters to them, set their own center, and move straight in that direction. And for those who want to further sharpen the senses already within them.
Each of us has things that move our hearts for reasons we cannot quite explain. Sounds, colors, places, people, words, cultures, scenery. The feeling born the moment we touch them sometimes stirs us inside faster than thought.
Concept & Background
The DNA engraved in our bodies. What we inherited from our ancestors. The cultures and sensibilities nurtured over long years. And feelings that words alone cannot capture, which we are tempted to call the subconscious or the memory of the soul. Since ancient times, across many eras, countless people have passed life on. At the end of that unimaginably long chain is the "self" living now.
What has continued unbroken from the past to the present now pulses as one life called "me." In this work I painted that unseen "memory of life" and the "senses" that surely exist within.
Technique, Color & Expression
On the canvas I layered colors that convey the heat of life: red, orange, yellow, green, blue. The red and orange spreading at the center recall the sun, fire, the blood circulating in the body and pulsing life. Around them, blues, greens and yellows reminiscent of water, earth and plants mix together, spreading across the whole canvas without staying in one place. The different colors do not erase each other; by overlapping, mixing and influencing one another, each grows more vivid.
On Making This Work
The title "Amaterasu" means "illuminating the heavens." But what I wanted to express in this work is not becoming a special being in order to illuminate someone. What will you achieve? What title will you hold? As whom will you be valued? Before all that: "What is pulsing within me?"
When life answers the resonance there, your own way of being changes, and that change eventually connects to the flow of the world you live in. One life, existing here and now after a vast span of time. This work depicts the "resonance" within it.
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More about this painting
Amaterasu, the sun goddess
Amaterasu Omikami is the sun goddess of Japanese mythology. The Kojiki tells that she was born when the god Izanagi washed his left eye during a purification ritual.
As her name — "shining over heaven" — suggests, she is the one who lights the heavens. Known also from the myth in which she hid in the Heavenly Rock Cave and the world fell into darkness, she has been especially revered among Japan's gods.
Ise Jingu and the rebuilding every 20 years
Amaterasu is enshrined at the Inner Shrine (Kotai Jingu) of Ise Jingu in Ise, Mie Prefecture.
Once every 20 years, Ise Jingu holds the Shikinen Sengu: the shrine buildings are rebuilt, the sacred treasures are all made anew, and the deity is moved to the new shrine. The tradition is said to have begun in 690, in the Asuka period, and despite interruptions it has continued for more than 1,300 years. The 62nd took place in 2013, and the 63rd is planned for 2033.
By rebuilding every 20 years, the skills of the shrine carpenters and of the artisans who make the robes and treasures are handed down from generation to generation. Rather than preserving the old as it is, the same form is made new again and again — and so it continues. I feel this is a very Japanese way of "carrying on."
What does your life remember?
I gave this painting the question: "What does your life remember?"
Our bodies carry genes passed down from parent to child. And there are things passed down that we cannot see — language, culture, seasonal festivals, food, the way we move our hands.
There are sounds, colors and places that move our hearts even when we cannot explain why. Perhaps they are memories that have remained within us through the long chain of life.
When life answers the resonance
Just as the Shikinen Sengu has made the same form new again and again, we too live what we have inherited anew, with our own lives.
Standing before this painting, please listen to what quietly resonates within you.
Sources
Kojiki
Ise Jingu (About the Shikinen Sengu)
Jingu Administration Office (63rd Shikinen Sengu)
¥172,000
tax, frame & domestic shipping included
shipping outside Japan: flat ¥8,000
approx. USD $1,150
A one-of-a-kind original painting.
