Painter Kiyoka Yamagata weaves emotional memories into vivid color.
She extracts universal emotional structures from subtle phenomena, expressing them as profound aesthetic experiences, emotions, and impulses through intense chromatic expressions.
Engaged in painting since childhood, Yamagata has actively exhibited her work in galleries and art fairs both in Japan and internationally since 2009. The richness of color, born from a dialogue between emotion and materiality, transforms emotional landscapes, inviting on a journey of the heart.
This artistic pursuit is an exploration into reconstructing the elusive movements of the heart through the visual language of color, form, and space. It is equivalent to a journey expressing emotions latent in the deepest recesses of the mind.
The source of inspiration lies in the phenomenological beauty scattered throughout daily life: the inherent structure within casual landscapes, the emotional expressions appearing on people's faces, or the concrete forms of animals. These emerge on the surface of memory as vivid chromatic representations at certain moments. Colors linked with diverse emotions such as joy, sorrow, poignancy, and hope resonate with past experiences and memories of relationships, significantly influencing the genesis of the artworks. This phenomenon can be understood as fragments of emotion bathing in the light of color, thereby reconfiguring their meaning.
These elements are ruminated upon in the mind, and paints are meticulously layered over time until emotions manifest in their purest form. While oil paints are the primary medium, various materials like acrylics, pastels, and oil sticks are combined to impart multilayered textures and visual profundity to the works. Beyond the use of brushes and knives, direct hand-painting imprints emotions directly onto the canvas, fostering a fundamental communion with inner spirituality.
In the creative process, emotion sometimes precedes the creative impulse, while at other times the material itself guides expression in unexpected directions. Serendipity is also an indispensable element in the composition of the works, where new discoveries and aesthetic value are created amidst unpredictable occurrences. This is metaphorically compared to exploring the interior of an emotional landscape and seeking new paths within it. Vibrant and diverse colors not only symbolize vitality and dynamism but also express the richness of emotion. The layering of colors and brushstrokes visualizes the fluctuation of emotion and the flow of time, while the impasto expresses layers of memory and the depths of feeling. The works encompass the dichotomy of experiential memory and reality, present and past, yet are characterized by expressing complex emotional structures that cannot be reduced by such opposing frameworks.
Kiyoka Yamagata's works are landscapes of emotion, where their vibrant colors represent a journey of hope.