Yuu Tsukinaga with an example of her spiritual art (all photos courtesy Kyoto Visitors Guide)
Kyoto Visitors Guide this month has an intriguing item about a young artist inspired by Shinto-Buddhist themes. A native of Kyoto, Yuu Tsukinaga found power in drawing buddhas when young, following which she spent time in Mexico where she developed a love of bright colours.
Her spiritual art has won wider attention, and she was invited to offer her paintings to Kashihara Jingu in Nara, supposedly the mythical site of Emperor Jimmu’s palace. Her paintings depicted Yatagarasu, the three-legged crow, and Kinshi, another imaginary bird that also guided Jimmu on his path of conquest to the homeland of Yamato.
To me, motifs inspired by Shinto and Buddhism have no preordained form. When I create my work, I feel I transfer a image or a symbol that enters into my mind onto a canvas. Therefore, I really have no sense that I actually ‘create’ te work as an expression of my own will, but I am just a medium with no sense of self who delivers the image or the message from somewhere.
Although I call myself a painter of ‘Shinto and Buddhist art’, I;m not intending to present any particular religious symbols and figures. What I feel through my art work is more primitive and fundamental, such as the sky, universe, my inner self and universal love which covers all existnece in this world. A magnificent presence which is invisible but certainly exists around us all.
I have learned iai-dou (way of the sword], sa-dou (tea ceremony) and ka-dou (flower arrangement). We have a variety of traditional ‘dou’ but no matter how many ‘ways to master’ we have and how different they are externally, I feel all ‘ways’ try to reach ‘the single same point.’
Large scale calligraphy during the dedication ceremony at Kashihara Jingu
Tenchi Kaibyaku – The Beginning of Heaven and Earth
Extract from Fujin-Raijin, deity of Wind and Thunder
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