When we look at a painting, we are also being looked at by the painting.

What unfolds here is not a fixed relationship between “seeing” and “being seen.” Just as inhalation and exhalation alternate to form a single breath, seeing and being seen also dissolve into one another, sustaining our connection with the world.

What emerges in the midst of this breath is a state in which the world and the self have not yet been separated, before words and judgments arise. It is, in a sense, a moment of subject-object undifferentiation. I find the potential of painting in this kind of experience as it is.

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The act of painting, space, light, time, and memory do not exist independently of one another. They contain contradictions and differences, while simultaneously embracing one another. When these elements merge, a “field” comes into being.

What I seek to paint is not a painting that represents things. It is a painting that evokes a “field” in which the boundary between seeing and being seen dissolves, and the self and the world emerge as a single experience.

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Tomonari Nakayashiki