Takako Azami

There's a lovely little gallery down the road from where we live and at the moment it's showing some of the works by Japanese artist Takako Azami. I have never seen her work before, but I love it!

She has spent years capturing the elemental qualities of pines, bamboo, plum and maple trees using sumi-e ink on the back of hemp paper. She paints large and small dots, and allows the ink to partially bleed through to the front side of the paper. Some of the dots are grey and some are deep black, so that a sense of depth is suggested. The paintings are abstract, but amazingly evocative of a summers day, lying under a shady tree and I love the combination of creating modern-style artwork using traditional techniques. I would dearly love to own one of these.......

I took this "retro" photo of some blossom yesterday and felt it had a similar feel to Azami's paintings.