1440 hours of Painting of Nirvana: Tree of Dawn, Yuichiro Sato's Heart Landscape Birch Tree at Dawn "Wherever you go, you can draw the painting you want to paint" Birch Tree Country · Painting Tree Man

Whenever I start creating, I always hear other people's voices and see other people's eyes. I don't know why I have this illusion, although many times it can make me lose, but it can also make me grow. No one knows where you are, believe in yourself, and there is no other choice.

INTERVIEWER Yuichiro Sato

(Please rotate the screen 90° clockwise for the best viewing angle)

Koivumaisema

Three elderly birch trees stand by a foggy lake. The fog froze the occasional particles of sunlight that had broken in, as if the sand slipping off the hourglass had stopped flowing in an instant. In the quiet and bitter cold, time is also praying for the coming solidification - although it is a painting, there must be a completely different world there...

<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="10" > birch tree at dawn</h1>

"Koivumaisema" is the title of the painting, which in Finnish means "at dawn" and "birch landscape". At a length of 780 centimeters and a height of about 300 centimeters, he used only automatic pencils and graphite to create, drawing for 8 to 14 hours a day, which took a total of 6 months to complete. This is the original landscape of Finland; he is the Japanese painter Yuichiro Sato.

Koivumaisema (partial)

Whenever he wanted to draw something, the first thing Sato picked up was a pencil. A point of origin, a 0.5 mm automatic pencil, a long and quiet time. No shackles, no pressure on commercial drawings, no dazzling showmanship. He just wanted to paint simpler, even if the format became larger and larger, even if he could only complete 20 square centimeters of work a day, but after every stroke, he still wanted to paint simpler.

In front of The Work of Yuichiro Sato

Whether it's a tree or a forest, Sato always likes to describe the details. So we will see the moss growing on the tree, the cracking and uplifting of the bark. Having seen these works, Finns say they remember the familiar landscapes and the charm of nature. Sato knows that birch trees and lakes are the pride of Finns, just like the cherry blossoms in Japan, they symbolize people's precious and extraordinary life force, the difference is that the former stands in the cold, and the latter dances in the wind.

<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="73" > "You can draw what you want to paint wherever you go."</h1>

Yuichiro Sato was born in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan in 1979. In high school, he gave up his three-year athletics club for painting, and then he was admitted to Tohoku University of Art and Design, where he earned a bachelor of fine arts and a master's degree in Japanese painting.

Although he enrolled in a Japanese painting course, Sato thought that it took a lot of time to learn Japanese painting, and it was very difficult to deal with various painting materials, including paint and paper, and it was necessary to draw within various strict restrictions and rules. So, as time went on, an otherwise vague idea became clearer: Japanese painting was not something he wanted to paint, and Japan might not be a place where he could chase his artistic dreams.

After graduating from graduate school, after a decade of dormancy and exploration, in 2016, Sato applied for the Japan Agency for Cultural Affairs' Artist Overseas Internship Program and came to Finland, which also has rich natural resources and profound national culture in the northern hemisphere. After stepping on this simple and cold Nordic land, the exotic time and space re-sorted his state of mind and creativity, and Sato felt that he had been reset. On the occasion of Nirvana, a quote from his university teacher, Professor Masanori Kihara, echoed in his ears all the time: "Wherever you go, you can draw what you want to paint." ”

<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="74" > the country of birch trees</h1>

Boating in the lake, walking in the woods, planting berries, picking mushrooms... A simple and free life always makes people forget the passage of time. It wasn't until he saw it—a birch tree standing by the lake—that a scene he had long wanted to paint but could not express, a picture that crossed the entire eurasian continent. At this point, Sato, who had planned to stay in Finland for only one year, suddenly realized that he might never be able to leave the country.

Facing an old tree, I was in awe and affinity at the same time. The moment of feeling holiness in an ordinary place, I respect that feeling and try to express it. The encounter with Finland, the encounter with a tree, changed my work and life.

Centered on birch trunks and symbiotic mosses and ferns, black and white are drawn with graphite and automatic pencils, and light and dark, dry and wet are expressed with mineral pigments and Japanese inks. The four seasons change, and the people who paint trees also follow the pace of the rotation of the seasons to feel the culture and history of carving them, and after the four seasons, there is another season... Although the traditional Japanese art of painting constitutes most of Sato's creative ideas and painting methods, this Japanese man in Northern Europe has been in joy year after year, seeking his own way of expression, and he has not stopped.

The exhibition hall site

In Finland, many people feel the shadow of Japanese painting after seeing my works, such as the tension of the works, the black and white world view, the processing and blank space of the space, and so on. I absorbed the essence from the masters such as Ashyuki Nagasawa, Katsushika Hokusai, Ito Wakasuka, and Hasegawa, and I thought, maybe this is my sense of identification with Japanese painting.

Yuichiro Sato

Art has no barriers, but it has roots. In Jyvaskyla, 300 kilometers north of Helsinki in south-central Finland, in the winter of minus 30 to -10 degrees Celsius, there are old birches standing on the lake, and there are painting trees that remember the East.

Eye Edge Art Chronicles Part 835 is dedicated to the artistic gift of life.

Text Writing: Eye Edge Art Zhi

If you need to reprint, please obtain authorization first, and please indicate the source after reprinting