I’m making a start on work for an Exhibition at Space2 in Watford at the end of this year. The exhibition is titled ‘Aware’, a Japanese word (pronounced: a-wa-rA), meaning something like ‘pathos’ or ‘a sensitivity to things’. It comes from the expression ‘Mono no aware’ (mO-nO nO a-wa-rA) which can be translated as ‘an empathy toward things’ or ‘a sensitivity to ephemera’. It’s a term that we don’t quite have a translation for, which intrigues me. My favourite translation so far, is ‘the ‘ah-ness’ of things’.

I have had this sense a lot recently when looking out to sea during my Cornwall visits. Light, Sea, Sky, Flora and Fauna: all passing through the seasons.  This first painting, a work in progress titled ‘Estuary’, is made from memories of looking over the estuary at Falmouth through a really luminous but hazy light. One of the things I want to communicate in these paintings is an awareness of the transience of all things and an appreciation of the ebb and flow of  light, the seasons and the moment. This will hopefully be a study in appreciating the beauty in impermanence and understanding a kind of sadness which that provokes.
I will be exhibiting alongside British born Japanese artist Hideki Arichi. The Exhibition will run November to December 2014 at Space2 in Watford. More information to come later this year.