I would like to reproduce on canvas “sceneries at the bottom of memories” which exist in myself. They are concerned not only with this visible world, but also with all sorts of “images” perceived by five senses (for example: odor, temperature, humidity, sound, touch, etc.)  It is also important for me to paint with my own hands using brushes and painting knives.  This action enables me as a result to express my own ”life”.
 
When I paint pictures, I attach importance also to ‘’accidents’’.  Since some of the colors and shapes that spring up by accidents appear apart from the consciousness, they are rich in unpredictable effects.  It is in response to these colors and shapes that I add further touches, and then other colors and shapes appear.  It is through my confrontations with the canvas, a kind of jam session for me, that the painting begins to germinate.  I let the painting transform itself, and try to find the ideal image, continuing to handle the brushes until I obtain satisfaction.  It is the act of searching for the summit where the colors, the shapes and the materials resonate with each other in my visual perception.  Like a musician who interprets the celestial music through his auditory perception, like a cook who achieves the ideal taste through his gustative perception, I would like to express new ‘’sceneries’’ on canvas.

The painting is a form expressed only within a rectangle.  Therefore, all the works are mere fragments of things.  But just because they are fragments, they have the possibility of making us feel an expanse and resonance which go beyond the limit of rectangle.

For me, painting a picture is to grope, by way of the colors and shapes which appear in it, for the substance of my being which vacillates incessantly.  The painting is a reality.  It is the substance itself.  If my own life cannot participate in this world but for an instant, I would like to project it directly in my works.

I would like to be a simple instrument of painting.

                                                 November 2003, in Paris
                                                      Yoshio Ogawa