My first exhibit, and cherry blossoms

It's been a while!

When I first arrived in Japan, I did so well recoding and sharing my experiences, but as time progressed and the deadline for my show approached, I went straight into painting mode and managed to do little else. However, now that I'm back at home, I have time to look back on the second half of my stay and the creative residency, and of course, I want to share it with you!

At this point, you must be thinking "Where are the paintings?", and rightly so. I made seven new paintings during my time at Almost Perfect, and I can't wait for you to see them! But as always with my traditional art, the paper got warped, so I'm currently flattening them to prepare them for scanning and editing. Once that's done and they're in their final form, I'll make a proper post! The paintings have a simple narrative running through them: They show a cat delivering a bento lunch box to its owner, passing through various locations in and around Tokyo. I wanted to paint something light-hearted and fun that would make me happy, and that would capture my impressions of my time in Japan.

The exhibition, Cat Tales, was lovely, and I'm so grateful to everyone who came by, looked at my work, and chatted with me. Everyone was so sweet, and it's truly special to have so many people show up for me on the other side of the world. The tiny gallery space was absolutely packed during the opening reception on Saturday! The experience confirmed my decision to switch to traditional media, and to pursue gallery work in the future.

On another note, the cherry blossoms forecast was completely off this year. Initially, the sakura were supposed to bloom by 21 March, but ended up being out by the time my gallery show opened in the first week of April. I had planned to see so many beautiful spots and do day trips to visit some more outside of Tokyo, but once my show had opened, I had to take care of the gallery from 1-6 PM. So I guess I'll have to come back to get the full experience! That being said, I managed to go out in the mornings and snap lots of photos in various spots. I hope I managed to capture the atmopshere, so that you can get an idea of what it's like. These are from Chidori-ga-fuchi and Meguro river: