"The Memory of Hydrangea"

"The Memory of Hydrangea"Oil on panel16 1/3" x 10 3/4"2024 Hirabayashi Takahiro paints surreal worlds inhabited by young women and girls. He expresses the ambiguous boundary between reality and unreality through the female figure, who is neither a child nor an adult, but something in-between.“The adolescent female figures are between childhood and womanhood, in a state of transition, straddling two states like the universe straddles the physical and the metaphysical.” Luke W BarrettThe inspiration for this theme came during his last year as a student, when a major earthquake (2011) transformed his daily life into an extraordinary one. He was moved by the piety and kindness of human beings when he saw food and beautiful flowers being offered to a stone statue of a god on the side of the road, as if supplies were unsatisfactory. “I hope to express the feelings I had at that time through my artwork as well”. Hirabayashi then went on to explore Japanese religious stories and rituals, and p