I want to preserve the stars, which exist in various forms,
with all their fluctuations,
as some kind of form.
This is the second A.O.V, imbued with my personal feelings.

During the creation process,
even though my hands are certainly moving, and the paint is spreading,
I sometimes find myself feeling strangely detached,
as if the forms do not yet exist as forms.

If I were to force a comparison,
it would be like a daydream, a hazy state of awakening.
But then, I realize the work has certainly taken shape and is there.

Whether it's a habit or a thought process,
I still don't clearly understand it myself, and to be honest, I don't want to provide an answer yet.
With this underlying theme of "daydream" woven in, I present "Meltstar – MELTSTAR –" as my first work.

I saw a fireball for the first time when I was in elementary school.
It was on my way home from piano lessons.

I remember feeling time stop for a moment the instant I saw that large object
shining with a brilliant, intense light, falling beyond a small hill.
I later looked it up and learned it was a "fireball."

Since then, I've seen fireballs many times.
On the day of a fireworks festival, I even saw three in one night.
If I hadn't known what a fireball was,
I probably would have dismissed it as
"a slightly unusual firework" or something similar.

Once you know something, you become more likely to notice
related phenomena afterwards.
I still experience this daily.
However, regarding fireballs, I've seen them several times even as an adult,
and I sometimes feel a slight stir of wonder, thinking
"Isn't the encounter rate rather high for mere coincidence?"

Could it be that I have a constitution that makes me susceptible
to receiving some kind of cosmic energy...?
Such spiritual thoughts sometimes
cross my mind.

But then, immediately,
a scene from a science class in my student days comes to mind.
"MA! Is there something in the sky?
This isn't the time to be staring out the window daydreaming!"
I remember that moment when I was told that, and the class erupted in laughter.
It wasn't just once, it was practically a regular occurrence.

Ah, I'm sure I just
have an unconscious habit of looking up at the sky.
That's why the probability is slightly higher.
It's probably just that.

Even so,
the next time I encounter a fireball,
I'm sure I'll go through the same thought process.

It just occurred to me this morning that I became aware of my love for miso soup when I was in elementary school.

I grew up in a household with four sisters, where both parents worked, and each of us had assigned chores. The chores changed from time to time, but there was a period when I made breakfast after hanging the laundry in the morning.

Incidentally, my biggest enemy wasn't touching wet laundry in winter, but the frogs that sometimes appeared in the drying area during the rainy season.

To get back to the point, the miso soup I always made for breakfast was made with the limited ingredients available in the refrigerator.

Now, I can freely decide what kind of miso soup I want to eat that day. I might buy nameko mushrooms, or add a lot of komatsuna. In recent years, I've even developed a slight preference for cutting one piece of fried tofu into four large pieces and eating it with plenty of broth.

As I cut it that way, I sometimes feel a pang of nostalgia, thinking that if I were making it for the whole family like I did back then, this utterly inconsiderate portioning would definitely not be allowed.

Whether made under limited conditions or prepared with complete freedom, miso soup always offers stable deliciousness and a certain level of quality. For me, who has recently become quite unlovable with my Engel's coefficient, it feels like one of those comforting places I can always return to.

As a final side note, when my family and I went to a certain family restaurant whose name starts with "Ji" and ends with "ru," my late grandfather, who after retirement was in charge of "just eating" at home, directly and bluntly stated, "The miso soup here is more delicious than the miso soup I usually drink." This too is now a good memory that makes me chuckle.

The desires to do this and that
gush forth like water from a tap every day.

One small desire I absolutely couldn't resist recently was to eat a candy apple right now.

When it comes to food,
if I think "I want to eat this now" and it's "available to buy now," it becomes difficult for me to resist.
After an hour of deliberation, I ended up ordering two overpriced candy apples
through a certain food delivery service.

First, I tried one.
The crispy sweet candy combined with the slightly tart apple, and the subtle mellow flavor of condensed milk.
While savoring the opposite kind of happiness from what I felt as a child, when I thought they were delicious but now...

I decided that I would try to live as faithfully as possible to the sudden desires that arise within me,
and, ensuring future desires, I gleefully put the other blue-green candy apple in the refrigerator to eat during my break.

A few hours later, the candy apple I took out again
was completely sticky,
and the sourness of the apple, which I bit into after cutting it and avoiding the candy,
quietly compounded the sadness in my heart.

I wasn't satisfied, so I ordered two more the next day, which brought closure to my feelings.

The greenish-blue in this artwork is the color of that candy apple.
The slightly whitish pink
is the color of the memory of the one that tasted the best.

When people live a flat life,
emotions tend to be negative-dominant,
and there's a theory that the ratio of negative to positive becomes 7:3.

In this artwork, which I created unconsciously,
the color distribution for the "negative apple" side also happened to be about 70%.

Perhaps, more than we think, emotions appear as colors in their honest proportions.

I've been longing for the exhilarating feeling of a wild brushstroke, so
this work is part of the "coating series" that originated with the first installment,
Brush Impact, making its return since the winter of 2025.

Brush Impact is a painting series that emphasizes both the impact of color and the vigor of brushstrokes.
It aims to balance the raw intensity of each individual brushstroke
with the energy exuded by the colors.

Behind Brush Impact,
my signature 3D 2D coloring style, which allows one to feel the color and brushstrokes,
is superimposed.
However, there's another underlying theme.

It's not quite right to call it the "origin," but
one of the fundamental sensations in my painting is doodling.

I started doodling, if I recall correctly, during my youth.
It was around the time I began to seriously learn how to draw,
and in a way, I drew it as an escape from reality.

In the art community that has existed since the dawn of the internet,
I've often seen the familiar exchange of comments like,
"This is no longer a doodle, it's a masterpiece,"
in response to drawings uploaded as "doodles."

Considering what "doodling" means to me, beyond its original definition,
I think it's less about perfection and more about the weight of emotion.

When you feel like drawing, you draw what you want, how you want. I believe that alone makes it beautifully complete.

If I were to talk about technique,
there's a beauty that comes from the ambiguity of not fully deciding the final landing.
It's a feeling similar to a rough sketch, but there's an addictive pleasure that can only be obtained from it, and it's incredibly comfortable.
I sometimes aim for this and complete it as a finished work.
That style is also close to doodling in terms of brushwork.

Without being constrained by anything, I let my brush play, as if spewing out what I feel now and what I've always felt.
I even feel that it's the origin of artistic sensibility.

"Brush Impact" is strongly linked to this unconstrained, free sensibility.

This is my first work as "Imperfect."

Always imperfect, never having tasted perfection.

Though I often feel empty realizing this truth,
accepting it brings sudden clarity to my heart and the courage to keep moving forward.

The honest feelings hidden behind complex emotions.
The complex thoughts within simple words.
The weight of gray lurking between black and white.

Beauty, ugliness, reverence, disappointment, apathy, nostalgia, curiosity, despair.
Riding the unbridled waves of emotion born from a single person,
everyone lives as a human, each riding their own way.

And the opaqueness beyond a lived life, given to everyone, the uncertainty of when it might disappear.

Amidst such fragility,
using the limited energy given,
to feel, to think, and sometimes to dissolve, to create something.
And then, surely, to continue believing that some other energy will be born beyond that.

I want to look at the true scenery visible beyond,
where I turn my gaze to the beauty precisely because it is not perfect.

I sometimes describe the feeling of being in the zone as my consciousness flowing towards the tip of a pencil.
In this context, I'm using "pencil" in a positive sense, but I actually have a pencil mark on my palm.

One day, when I was sharpening a double-ended pencil in an electric sharpener, something happened, and I accidentally jabbed it into my palm from behind.

For a while, I was dominated by the memory of the pain and the desperate struggle to remove the lead. The pencil mark, left precariously close to my lifeline, even felt somewhat ominous.

Then, one day, I heard a poetic expression from some fortune-telling or superstition that "moles on the palm grasp stars."
Since then, after deciding to call that scar a "pencil mole," my perspective completely changed, and it remains with me to this day.

Apparently, there's even mole fortune-telling these days, and some people get moles tattooed on auspicious spots.

In other words, I believe there are many ways to turn bad luck into good through sheer belief.

What I aimed to convey in this work is the feeling of memories unexpectedly unearthed on a winter evening.

It's common to suddenly recall the past, triggered by seasons, sounds, smells, or colors.

For example, even if the triggers are similar, like the same season at the same time of day, various different scenes can come to mind.

Like harvesting potatoes, where more keep emerging the deeper you dig,
forgotten memories, making you think "there's more?", continue to be unearthed.

While feeling almost overwhelmed by intense nostalgia,
there are days when I want to revel in that nostalgic feeling,
and on such days, I go out somewhere.
My preference is for places that are relatively quiet.
And not too far away.
Because moods change quickly, I want to reach these places before the feeling fades.

On a winter evening, especially when the scent is not sharp but a little mellower.
There are scenes I recall in the early hours before it gets dark.

A certain station where I got off a circular line running deep underground.
I used to go there several times, and it seems that the place didn't suit me.

I haven't delved deeply into it, so I don't really know why, but I often felt as if my heart was being gripped.
There were many places that felt unsettling, like parks I disliked despite seeming bright, or next to schools,
or residential areas where I never saw children despite the many houses.

However, in that area, I also often felt a sense of nostalgia.
So, I turned that to my advantage and did things that amplified that feeling.

On the way home from the public bath in the evening, I would always buy salted skewers at a tired-looking yakitori shop.

Just before it got dark, with a can of shijimi clam soup or oshiruko (sweet red bean soup) from a vending machine, drinks I wouldn't usually buy often, in hand, I would go to that disliked park.
And I would surf the internet aimlessly until I was scared to the limit. The sound of a swinging swing, though no one was there, would bring me back to reality. Believing that only the wind was blowing there, I would retreat.

Late at night, I would go to eat limited edition ramen only available late at night. I liked it "konadashi" (very firm noodles) with extra green onions.

I learned that even in places I disliked, there were ways to enjoy them right in front of me.

Honestly, it's still difficult to sort out whether these memories are good or bad.

If I think that even trivial, everyday things I'm experiencing now will someday be remembered this way, I can find some meaning in them.

Do you also have any winter memories that still wander around within you?

The theme of my 9th piece is constellations.

The previous "Melting Star" series might have been somewhat abstract,
but for this piece, "Constellation," I intentionally rendered it straightforwardly.

Space and stars are beautiful, mysterious, and overwhelmingly powerful.
Yet, there's a certain sense of relief.

As adults, many of our perceptions change,
but this particular feeling is one of the few that has remained almost unchanged
from childhood until now.

On nights when too many stars are visible, if you gaze into the dark sky…
your thoughts blur, and gradually you can't tear your eyes away,
and before you know it, you're captivated by the sensation of being drawn in.

When observing constellations in the night sky,
the translucent figures of animals peculiar to constellations
emerge as images,
and their sheer size can make your blood run cold.

Like this piece, figurines are also similar;
when incorporated into a design,
they appear delicate, fleeting, and even lovely.

The discrepancy between the motif
and its immense scale when returning to the source
reminds me anew of the joy of shaping something based on a motif.

There are some stars that can only be confronted
when made small enough to seem fragile.

In the junior high school courtyard, where strict discipline and group activities were so enforced that students whispered it was like the military,
a braided girl with a strong sense of justice said to everyone:

"When there's one rotten orange, it gradually spoils the ones around it. That's the situation we're in now, so let's put more effort into it!"
Her gaze met mine for a moment.

Running around shouting in the scorching sun,
huddling together and exchanging passionate words,
marching in step with a large goal written on paper displayed behind them.

Carrying feelings that had nowhere to land,
I got by feeling like a frozen orange, preserved just before rotting, rather than a spoiled one.

Holding up one ideal of justice like a star, we first all learned one correct answer.

I thought I was one of the cogs in the machine.
Yet, I couldn't understand why the PE teacher often casually dismissed me as "lacking motivation."

The first and last time that person praised me was for the cover illustration of the graduation album. I drew the cherry blossoms as meticulously as possible.
I felt like I was finally being noticed, but I still remember the feeling of dissatisfaction at that time.
I wondered if my passion couldn't be conveyed to others unless it was this clear and direct.

It was at that moment I realized that unless I took advantage of my strengths and stepped forward to some extent,
I would just be swept along.
Because I avoided standing out, I struggled for a while after that.
But now, I feel like I can breathe a little stronger than back then.

The fire within me, whether in those days when I struggled to blend into the group, or now that I've chosen a life away from the group, it never disappears. It constantly vanishes, reappears, and changes form, always remaining right there.

Sometimes I remember my origins.
Embracing the warmth of the small star I have now, I try not to let its flame die out.