Satoru Takeuchi at work

Like many artists, Satoru Takeuchi is reluctant to discuss his paintings, as he would rather have the art work speak for itself. However, after a little probing, the soft-spoken artist joined me for a bowl of hot ramen and shared the details of his artistic practice and long-ranging career.

Featured in a group exhibition at Nerima Museum in Tokyo alongside acclaimed artist, Keizaburo Okamura from February 21st until April 11th, Takeuchi is unlike other contemporary artists. Usually when interviewing an artist, he or she presents a portfolio of sketches or drawings, or more recently, files of digitized design work to share. However, not Satoru Takeuchi. He would rather show me a simple stone.

"I need to feel the air and the natural environment through my mind and body", he begins. "In order to paint, I must feel at one with the environment."

Schooled at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts, Takeuchi is a practicing contemporary painter and visual arts lecturer based in Saitama prefecture. He has shown his paintings largely in Tokyo; however, some of his work has been exhibited in Australia where it is held in private and public collections.

Essential to his painting practice is working outdoors. Having grown up in the mountains of Nagano, Takeuchi still feels a fond affinity for the place he knew as a child, believing it to be the reason why he paints in the mountains. Takeuchi largely works in the mountains behind his home in Saitama today, often creating pigments from the mountain rocks and soil he collects in this region.

Dressed in the requisite black, Takeuchi readily describes how important it is for him "to collaborate with the water, the sky, the wind and [the changing] of the seasons." What this means is that Takeuchi often lets the external elements of nature and their effects create his paintings, allowing wind to ripple the paper, rain to smear the paint, or ice to crack the pigments.

Takeuchi paints in the traditional Japanese Nihonga method which incorporates the use of natural pigments. These natural pigments are derived from stones and plant matter that form the base of color used in paints. Seen in traditional Japanese painted screens and scrolls, the Nihonga method of painting is a long-standing convention in Japan. Similarly, Takeuchi also integrates the use of traditionally crafted Japanese paper known as washi. Rather than applying paint to a stretched canvas, he prefers the use of paper, as its soft texture creates a visual effect that appears natural and unassuming.

Opening a plastic bag filled with rocks collected from his morning walk, Takeuchi begins describing in great detail the color of each stone. At first, it is hard to understand what could inspire such an intense fascination with these rather indiscriminate rocks. Yet, it is rocks that have formed the basis of his career for over twenty years. For when Takeuchi looks at a stone, he sees more than just that; in fact, he sees a work of art.

Takeuchi's paintings are large in scale and often range in size from three to five meters in length, by a meter tall. Colored in the rich splatters and drips of crimson, brown and orange, his works evoke a sense of the earth's topography, distant and distorted. Undulating patterns and swirls of color vibrate across the painting, while the subtle pattern of the paper grain is seen upon closer inspection.

Despite his use of Nihonga, Takeuchi's work departs from its traditional subject matter of celebratory scenes and decorative seasonal motifs. In fact, for the past ten years, he has been working in a style which he refers to as 'Nihonga: the New Tradition'. His paintings are no longer figurative; instead, they are a representation of the physical elements of the earth through the exploration of artistic and natural processes.

Interestingly, Takeuchi's paintings are never titled; rather, they are simply dated with the time, year and place in which they were created. He stresses that he keeps his work without formal titles or words, as he adds that "the experience of creating the painting is the most important element."

At times, Takeuchi's approach to painting could be perceived as a little romantic, evoking a stereotypical image of a Zen painter, alone on the mountainside from a bygone era. However in an age of increasing urbanization, and particularly in a country that has experienced intense industrialization, Takeuchi's paintings are refreshing and relevant, as his artistic expression is one that attempts to synthesize with the natural environment.

I asked Takeuchi if he will always work outdoors, and in the Nihonga style, or whether other approaches or styles of painting interest him. Laughing, he replied, "I will always be a Nihonga painter. Historically Japanese Nihonga painters have lived well into their nineties. I intend to live a long life."