™Ryo Suzuki™

I feel my attitude toward painting flowers has changed. Some years ago I would get
tired trying to draw the shapes of each petal or each leaf as exactly as possible; I
would be very busy striving to color the flowers as close to the real colors as possible.
I often felt I would need more time and more colors -- more and more, almost limitlessly.

When I painted hydrangeas, I spent most of my time drawing the shapes of the flowers, so
I had to give up my usual way for coloring. Instead, I tried to find which parts were more
powerful and impressive. As a result I put the darkest and strongest colors on some leaves
almost in the shape of a line.

Next time when I was facing gladioluses, I tried to follow something I learned from the
experience through the previous hydrangea painting. From the beginning I tried to find what
remarkable features the flowers had. First I was impressed with the beautiful contrast of
pink and white of the flowers, then I was overwhelmed by the vivid strength of the leaves.
I concentrated my attention on those two points.

Something in common for the both cases is "rather simple", compared with my older paint-
ings. I feel the sort of simplicity that my recent paintings have is one of the important
points also in haiku writing.

young earthworm
leaves the shades:
Determination