2026/08/21 13:40
Second Essay: Color brings back memories, color shows us different landscapes
The fun of creating the color of the wind! When I was a child, I often believed that “the wind has a color.” Spring wind was a slightly cloudy pink, tinged with white. Summer wind was a pale gold that seemed to bounce off the light. Autumn was an amber with shadows mixed in. Winter was a quietly sinking blue‑violet.
No one taught me this—just by gazing at the world, these colors that “could only be that way” naturally rose up in my heart.
This area above this line is displayed for free.
After becoming an adult, I realized that back then I was capturing scenery not by its “shape,” but by the “presence of color.” And even now, when I paint, what first appears is not a line, but a softly floating temperature of color, like the wind of those days.
Yet these are still conventional colors, and I keep struggling every day, wondering if I can express them with completely different colors.
The moment color saved my heart One day, on my way home from school, the sunset spread across the entire sky. I remember that color being so vast it defied words, gently wrapping up the anxiety and loneliness that had been sitting deep in my chest.
“Color can hold a person like this.”
That realization became the root of my current paintings. Color is not just visual information— it is something that can “change the way we hold our hearts.” That’s why, when I paint, I always carry somewhere inside me the question: “Can this color make someone’s heart even a little lighter?”
My work is not completed by my feelings alone. It is finished when the viewer can step into the space and color on the canvas, and their own memories merge with it, becoming one with the piece.
Image It’s really hard to capture this feeling.
Why I paint landscapes from memory The landscapes I paint are sometimes real places, and sometimes imaginary ones, where memories have melted together.
When I encounter a landscape or a flower, I only make a simple sketch and take a photo as a record. I stand there for a while, feeling the movement of the wind and light, and the entire space in which I’m standing.
Why was I moved by that landscape or flower? What did I feel—was it the shape, or the color? I keep thinking about that, and then I begin to paint.
Now, within the canvas, I search: “Was it this color I felt? Or that one?” What matters is “not forgetting the emotion of that moment.”
Sometimes, a color that appears by chance creates an unexpected effect. I try not to decide colors based on preconceptions, but to accept them with, “Oh, so this is how it turns out—wow.” And then the color expands again.
My works are completed only after I keep searching through “not this color, not that color,” until I finally reach, “Ah, this is the color—this is the one I was seeking…” At that point, the piece is almost finished.
Color is the trace of emotion. That’s why I don’t paint things just as they are, but rather, I think I’m painting while searching for “the colors left behind by emotion.”
Stories of encounters with color As I continue to paint, people sometimes say, “That color feels very much like you.”
Whenever I hear those words, I feel that their own memories of color have overlapped with mine.
Which means: me + you + the artwork = the completion of the piece as I envision it!!!
Nature is full of mysterious combinations of color. Let’s open our eyes wide and search for them.
Color is also a record of encounters.
Has there ever been a moment when color brought back a memory for you?
Image I found a mysterious color combination.
In closing: Toward the next door In this second essay, I’ve talked about the relationship between “color and memory” within me.
Color is not just something beautiful— it has a quiet power to gently support the heart and connect the past with the present.
At the same time, I’m experiencing how difficult it is to let people feel all of this through writing.
I often counter by saying, “If I could write in a way that truly conveys these feelings, I’d be a novelist, not a painter.”
That said, I still wonder whether I’m really able to paint in a way that lets people feel what I intend…
But for now, painting is more fun!
Next time, I’ll talk about “Why I insist on ‘free color’,” digging a little deeper into the reasons from the perspectives of technique and thinking.
