At first there are only a few brushstrokes and traces of colors that cover the surface of the canvas little by little.  Then the touches of paint succeed each other and I feel engaged in a veritable process of transformation in which the movements of my body are literally projected on the canvas.  I look at the painting I did yesterday.  Without knowing why, it seems better to me today.  Perhaps the colors and shapes come out better in the dimmed light of this grey day.  Perhaps I am simply receptive after a night of sleep.  My regard now turns to this other painting, done last year.  When I had just finished it the color in the left-hand corner bothered me, whereas it seems very natural today.

The incessant transformation of matter in which the act of painting involves me is partly out of my hands; once the artwork is completed, I become an ordinary viewer and am often touched and transformed myself as I consider it.  When I paint, it is as if my body were borne into the painting.  As a viewer I then seek to find my own truth, something that purifies me in return.  It is the inner vacillation between my mind and my body that I attempt to transport to the canvas, as if I were leading a reluctant animal.  The movement projected into the inert matter of the finished painting is what transmits, for better or worse, to he who considers it.  If I had to define the relationship between my painting and myself, I would say it is the meeting-point or the joining of object and subject, without it being possible to truly separate them from each other.  As if the substance of my being had finally ended by annihilating itself to breathe forth in the painting.

                                                     Yoshio OGAWA