Mai Takeshita presents a new body of work that reflects her ongoing engagement with nihonga, Japanese painting using traditional materials and techniques, reimagined as a contemporary practice. Working from observation, Takeshita depicts scenes drawn from her daily life as a young mother in Kyoto—an overflowing bookshelf, a jar of candy, her child’s sandbox—rendered not as fixed moments but as accumulations of memory and time.
Through careful layering of mineral pigments, sand, and gold leaf, and by embracing surface manipulation and material irregularity, Takeshita creates paintings that unfold slowly. Objects appear suspended between presence and absence, softened by muted palettes and flattened perspectives that emphasize rhythm, pause, and interval. Emptiness functions as an active compositional force, allowing atmosphere and sensation to take precedence over description. Approaching nihonga as a living methodology rather than a historical form, Takeshita’s work quietly balances tradition, personal experience, and contemporary sensibility.
