CAT'S FOREHEAD | Journal｜Kana Kitamura - Public Works with a Long Way to Go

Kana Kitamura - Public Works with a Long Way to Go

If you had happened to walk into a certain gallery in Tokyo in September 2011, you would have found Kana Kitamura there, painting. The gallery in question was galleryH in Sangen-jaya, and there, as part of her own private exhibition entitled 'Happy Therapy', Kitamura created a single, gigantic watercolour painting. She started painting on the day that the exhibition opened, and set down her brush two weeks later on the scheduled close date. She was in the gallery all day every day, to the point that she herself could reasonably have been considered a part of the exhibition. But when we ask to see her portfolio, interested in her distinctive style where light gets refracted through the unique prisms in her retinas and laid out in little pieces on the paper like a watercolour mosaic, it becomes clear that this way of painting is something of a recent development for her. We speak to her about her most recent projects, and that ineffable 'something' that her artwork attempts to capture. *Some of the works from the exhibitions discussed in this article can be seen on Kana Kitamura's profile page.

You studied fashion design at Bunka Fashion College. Is painting something you taught yourself?

Yes. At college I had classes in fashion illustration, but I've never studied classically, like sketching or anything like that. There were sketching classes, actually, but the idea of drawing plaster busts and things like that didn't really interest me. But I've liked drawing since I was a child. I used to go with my family to the mountains, and we'd all of us sit besides a waterfall and sketch. After I graduated fashion college, I wanted to carry on making art. I got a job with a clothing company, but quit straight away.

You took the plunge. It must have seemed like a waste to stay there, right? Then not long afterwards you won first prize for a competition you entered.

Yes, I won First Prize for the TOKYO illustration 2007 competition run by the TIS (Tokyo Illustrators Society). I really liked the idea of having my work displayed at the National Art Centre, Tokyo, so I was really thrilled. But soon after, I stopped making pieces in the same style of that painting with which won. I thought about it a lot, and realised that the work I was making then was still weaker than I wanted it to be. I still needed to uncover the kind of work that I really wanted to make.

Art work for a Magazine "ROCKS", SHIBUYA PUBLISHING & BOOK SELLERS

Another plunge, then. Thinking in terms of future career, it's not an easy thing to do to discard a style that's won you critical acclaim at the very start of your career, is it? In any case, you've now evolved a style where the colours are much more clearly and delicately fragmented.

As I carried on painting, the colour segments became smaller and smaller. If I stare at a subject for long enough, I start to see so many colours in it, so I found myself trying to capture them all, and then ended up with the style that I have. See how with this woman's skin, if you look long enough you can see not just the blue of her veins, but red and green and all different colours, right? (Kitamura shows me a small magazine clipping, but I confess that I could only see a plain tan brown.) Yet however much I painted, I wasn't making pictures that I was satisfied with, and for two whole years, I was worrying endlessly about it. I had the feeling that the pictures could get better, and there were things that I wanted to do. But however much I painted they didn't improve, and I just didn't know what to do about it. Towards the end, I got to the point that painting itself was a painful procedure for me. It was pretty difficult. Whilst all that was happening, I got the chance to do an exhibition in the Tambourin Gallery, in June of last year. I was sort of musing at the time whether to start using watercolours instead of acrylics, so I took the invitation as an opportunity to give watercolour painting a try. Then I did everything for that exhibition in a month-long burst of activity.

A work for the show"Happy Therapy", 2011

And that was the series that made up the 'Aurorara' exhibition you did. So your present style was developed one month before that exhibition. I think that your paintings became so much richer, with the switch over to watercolours.

When I paint with acrylics, my canvases turn out just as I think they will. I can control acrylics well, but nothing surprising happens when I use them. I have no power with them to create new things that exceed my expectations. That was what I found so fun and refreshing as soon as I started to use watercolours. Now I paint with the feeling that I can keep aiming higher and higher.

Then after that your exhibitions came with frightening rapidity - you did 'ETERNAL ROOM' in August, and then 'Happy Therapy' in September. It seems as though the change to watercolours got not just you moving, but the environment surrounding you as well. For the exhibition Happy Therapy, you did a public work spanning two weeks, producing a really large piece. Had you always planned to do that?

No, I began to paint the picture two days before the exhibition began, and simply didn't make it on time! I told one of the people at the gallery that I might not make it, and might have to exhibit a different piece, and they said that it was okay to do a public creation, to paint the picture at the gallery, so I made the decision that moment to give it a go. I had been thinking that I'd be able to complete the piece in two or three days, but everyone I'd spoken had would told me that it would definitely take longer, so it was an easy decision (laughs). In the end I went to paint at the exhibition every day, come rain come shine, and I finished it on the last day of the exhibition. Even then I wasn't sure if I was going to make it, so I would take it home and do painting at home. I think maybe that was a bit too big! I don't have anywhere to store it, either, so I've decided not to paint any more of that size for the moment (laughs). Of course, I would do if I got a good opportunity to...

A work for the show"Happy Therapy", 2011

It looks as though you keep yourself pretty busy (laughs). In any case, it's only a bit longer than half a year since you changed to your current style, and in that time it's become a lot more intense and refined. I get the sense it's going to keep changing from now on too.

The way I think about it, it's less a question of changing my style, and rather one of taking the paintings as far as they can go. That's the battle for me. I feel like my style at the moment has promise, but I want to make it much, much better. To take things beyond what I'm doing at the moment. And as I concentrate on doing that, my style will probably change into the bargain. Rather than creating something from nothing, my impetus is to convey reality, to push reality farther. I want to start taking photos to use for my pictures. If I get enough commissions, I'd like to travel abroad, take lots of photos and then use them as subjects for my paintings.

So although it would appear that Kana Kitamura has found a way of painting which she feels enthusiastic about, it also seems that she's only midway through her development. If that's the case, then we can expect to look on with great pleasure at the works that she comes up with in the future. Watching the process by which her works are produced, we can also imagine what is going on in the head of the creator of those works, at times sharing her pauses and silences, and at others listening to what she has to say, much like a visitor to a gallery where she is making one of her public works.

Text_Kenji Mori (BUILDING)

Translation_Polly Barton

【Public work at 'Happy Therapy' 】