New Japanese Modality

Investigation on Traditional Japanese Modalities

Fig.1: Japanese modality,Kikusui-mark, embroidered on Kimono

Fig.2: Octopus 2010- a painting hiring the design from kikusui-mark

The word, "Japanese modality" here, is very similar to "family crest" in UK. We have more than 5000 traditional modalities and they are still often used on textiles (fig.1) just like tartan designs in UK. I have been wondering why Japanese people prefer to extract the characteristic features out of the natural existences (e.g. followers, birds, snow etc. / 雪月花など) and convert them into symbolic images. To print on textiles? -- Possibly.

My Octopus is a challenge to re-present an ordinary dairy things (in this case, octopus) to an unordinaly way.

This painting was a trial whether if I can create a new Japanese modality.