Born in Kobe, he currently lives in Tokyo. I had been drawing and manga since I was 3 years old, so I initially wanted to be a manga artist. However, I was frustrated along the way and gave up on my career as a manga artist, but after the teacher at the art preparatory school I attended at the time highly praised my work, I decided to pursue a career in painting. I graduated from the Department of Japanese Painting at Musashino Art University, so I basically use Japanese painting materials when I create them, but I was taught by an oil painting teacher in Kobe even before I entered university, so I am strongly influenced by oil painting. I have been drawing the human body for 30 years, but recently I have been drawing "roses".
I am also interested in the overseas art scene, so I have been exhibiting my work overseas for about 20 years. Recently, he has been active mainly in Asia and Southeast Asia, and has been sold out at the Malaysia Art Expo for four consecutive years. Next year I plan to participate in a group exhibition in Chelsea, New York.
InterviewFeatured Artist
By depicting the real clash of human feelings, I hope to provide viewers with moments where contradictory things resonate. It often depicts the psychology of human beings struggling with each other, or the emotions of the moment when people seek each other, and these emotions can be said to be emotions that can overcome distance and space, no matter how far apart. It is a concept created from the perspective that "people sometimes want others intensely", and in particular, the two extremes, yin and yang, man and woman, cold and warm, etc., refer to things that attract each other like magnets.
In addition, when looking at warm colors in paintings, I sometimes want to see cold colors, so I sometimes create works with the aim of such visual effects. Also, as I draw, I want to draw a picture in which the paint becomes an object and the music can be heard in synesthesia. I want to depict these emotions so that the viewer can sympathize with them.
When I first started drawing the human body, I wasn't particularly conscious of it, but as I continued to draw, I became more and more interested in expressing the human psychology inside it, not just as a shape. When I went to the big screen, I began to draw multiple people instead of just one, and I realized that each pose, distance, and gaze created subtle relationships and emotions. There was something like tension and attraction that I couldn't explain in words, and I wanted to stick it on the screen. While keeping a distance from people that do not completely intersect, they are strongly attracted to each other somewhere. This state of "screaming" is what makes it human, and it is also the core of my expression.
I used to draw mainly the human body, but I felt that roses have the power to soothe people's hearts and have a charm that directly works on emotions, and I became strongly attracted to them. Another big reason was that my best friend, an illustrator, died of breast cancer 10 years ago. I continue to draw roses in order not to forget their existence and to keep them alive in my memory. In his works, he overlays both personal feelings and universal emotions.
The work "Pandora's Box" that I created when I was in my second year of university left the most impression on me. At that time, I focused on moving my hands rather than logic, and continued to draw. As a result, I was able to capture the form of the human body surprisingly naturally, and I felt like my senses and expressions were in line for the first time. It was not only a sense of technical accomplishment, but also the first work that made me realize that this is my expression.
Until now, I have focused on Japanese art materials, but in the future, I would like to expand the range of expression while crossing materials more freely. I would like to explore new possibilities for the screen by incorporating the texture and serendipity of each material, such as watercolor, colored pencil, and pastel. I am also very interested in techniques such as printmaking and lithographs. I would like to test how these flat yet reproducible expressions change my image and how it is conveyed. In the future, I would like to be a writer who can express myself in the most appropriate way at the time, regardless of genre or technique.
Kumiko Yamada has been depicting the human body for 30 years and has expressed the "psychology of fighting with each other" between people. In recent years, he has developed a new expression with roses as a motif and personal feelings. He is actively working overseas with his unique works that fuse elements of Japanese painting and oil painting, and expectations are high for further challenges beyond the boundaries of materials in the future.