19th-century Impressionist artists Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh would venture from their studios in pursuit of light, capturing raw intuitive impressions with swift brush strokes. In the same way, French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy 's piano pieces could transform light into the endlessly diverse changing sounds of nature. Within his varied cords, we can embrace the mystery of a higher creator. To Japanese artist Tomoko Hasuwa, light is an unspoken language, pieced together to flicker in the hippocampus. Viewed through the prism of the heart, radiant colors burst out freely, refracting traces of life using different spectrums.
Debussy found inspiration from Impressionist paintings, freeing himself from the elegant melodies and complete forms demanded by Baroque, Classical, and Romantic musical styles, seeking instead a "colorful impressionism" to create a hazy, poetic atmosphere. His well-known piano solo piece "Clair de lune" uses minimalist melodies to create layering, bringing intoxicating moonlight and a quiet silver brilliance into the minds of listeners.
A careful enjoyment of Tomoko Hasuwa's works will reveal hints of music. Always varied and filled with musicality, they rush about in waves, manifest themselves as tranquil lakes, and dance about in graceful minuet. She has devoted herself to capturing the sensation of shifting light through painting, abandoning the constraints of outline and detail to depict moving images. Using abstract and surreal colors to depict traces of light, viewers find themselves in a dreamlike world. Bold and unrestrained brush strokes, ambiguous form, nebulous light and shadow - all come together in an expressive Andante, in which people and objects are revitalized by the power of light.
Photography may be unparalleled in its ability to replicate appearance nearly perfectly, but the beauty of painting comes from the depiction of essence; finding that which the camera can never capture. Tomoko Hasuwa makes full use of the medium's strengths and limitations, choosing not to use still photographs as reference material, and avoiding delineated compositional lines. She begins a composition by playing self-made videos on loop, absorbing the constantly changing images with her own eyes, piecing them together in a creative effect that might be described as "afterimages". Some of her works are partial segments of a scene, while others are memory fragments or fleeting pieces of life. Viewers are given the opportunity to use their own visual senses to reconcile the colors, encouraged to find the resonating light in their own lives.
