In the hands and imagination of Ayumu Matsuoka, the universe is floating, benevolent, full of curiosity. There is a gentle, light and loving spirit to his works that makes you glad to be alive.

“I think the way an artist gazes at a motif is the same as the way an astronomer looks up at the night sky. As an artist, I want to keep this curiosity and observational ability to sense the universe in even the most ordinary things until the day I die.” (Ayumu Matsuoka)

Born in 1978, in Yokohana City, Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture, Matsuoka studied Nihonga at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Nihonga is a Japanese painting style where natural mineral pigments, and occasionally ink, together with other organic pigments are applied on silk or paper. The term is fairly recent, originally coined during the Meiji period (1868–1912) to differentiate this style from Western-style painting.

Matsuoka’s art reflects his curiosity about a broad range of subjects, bringing us a tadpole at the beginning of its life journey, a wild boar jumping happily across a wondrous landscape; the movement of fog and reeds in the stillness of the night, the illusion that is life, or an enchanting moment from a fairy tale whose characters are having a quiet moonlit chat, perhaps about how the story should unfold?

There is a kind of faint silence to his more ethereal works that takes you to the border with the unseen, a feeling that if you stand still just a little bit longer, a whole new world will come into focus before your eyes.

In his whales series, I feel like I am floating alongside his creations, nothing but an occasional whale song piercing the soothing silence of the deep all around me. Ahh.

Ayumu Matsuoka is a widely exhibited, multiple award-winning artist. He is also a Fellow of the Japan Art Institute and an adjunct lecturer at his alma matter, the Tokyo University of the Arts.

You can see more of his art on his website at https://ayumu-matsuoka.com and his IG @matsuoka_ayumu