Nana TAMAMOTO --- the Artist Who Never Feels Afraid of a Challenge

When you meet works of Nana Tamamoto, I invite you to take enough time first to face them without any knowledge about her works or herself.  Then, I would try to read about them and meet Tamamoto herself.

It was at the personal exhibition held here at Fukui City Art Museum in March 2004 that I first got the opportunity to meet Tamamoto’s artworks.  At that time, I wondered why she had come up with the idea of holding her personal art exhibition here in Fukui, considering the fact that the artist is from Toyama and now lives in Osaka.  When I asked her about it, she gave me a quite simple answer.  She said, “I want my works to be seen by anyone anywhere.”  However simple it may sound, no one could let her words pass without paying much attention to it because this attitude is very important as an artist.  Creating your own work will absolutely help you thrive as an artist, while it is possible that your creation may end up with being something just meaningless for others, and it’s also possible it may be appreciated as a great masterpiece.  I personally believe that people basically share the ability to identify with the same object regardless of the areas they live in, except for cases where people don’t share the same perspectives or their minds have become too numb to appreciate artworks depending on, in my belief, what kind of backgrounds they have because a little difference in environment and culture can form different perspectives.  Therefore, it could be very challenging for an artist sometimes when they decide to exhibit their artworks where they have almost no acquaintances, and people tend to develop an illusion that those exhibitions can be evaluated just from the number of visitors they record.  However, I believe it has a great meaning for an artist when they take on such a challenge and succeed to move someone, even if there is just one person who really appreciates their work.  In that sense, too, I believe it’s very important for artists to try to expose their works to anyone anywhere.

Now, Tamamoto is an artist who has tried to show her works to people in various regions.  Also, she has continued to develop her style as well, and has always created artworks that seem to resonate with Tamamoto herself.  Not only she uses oil and acrylic colors, but also she expands the range of mediums by adapting whatever new materials she herself needs such as fabrics and gauzes to express her ideas.  It could possibly be too much sometimes, but it seems that Tamamoto herself intuitively knows how far she could go and that she always creates her works without making any tiny ineffective impacts.  Then, we who appreciate her artworks will be overcome with the sensual world of even more impressive colors, and be engaged into her works whose layouts are well designed. 

Tamamoto has fixed her eyes on the inside of herself and kept looking deep inside of it.  What she gained from such experiences has materialized as her artworks.  Her works are surely the result of her creative activities, but what I admire most about her is that she doesn’t seem to hesitate to reveal herself in the process of creation.  Then, the color “red” created by Tamamoto, which is so vivid that it makes me wonder it may have some kind of mystic power, leaves me entranced and tempted into an illusionary world.

You face Tamamoto’s artworks, and then you face Tamamoto herself.  Everything they express, it’s her soul itself, her passion, and the inner world deep inside of her heart.

Tamamoto respects the preciousness of life, and I’m pretty sure she will never lose her appreciation toward the life she was given.  I also believe she will continue to thrive as an artist.  I wish her all the best, and I do hope more and more people will identify with her artworks and appreciate them as what contribute to their process of looking deep inside of themselves.

Hiroaki ISHIDO
Curator, Fukui City Art Museum