What Is the Gold Background? — Painting Light —
My work often features gold backgrounds.
I am sometimes asked why I choose gold,
and I believe it is because
I want to express the light that overflows from within.That is the desire behind it.
When I first encountered tempera, the first thing I learned was
a mixed technique combining oil and tempera.
The technique of layering oil-based paints and water-based tempera paints like thin veils
created a luster like velvet,
and I was deeply fascinated by the beauty of the colors quietly radiating from the canvas.
Eventually, I became drawn to the gold leaf expressions seen in icons and early Renaissance religious paintings,
and I began to want to paint the beauty of the heavens.
I tried using gold leaf within the oil-tempera mixed technique,
but it did not produce the inner glow I had imagined,
and a lingering sense of discomfort remained.
I wanted to express a gold that shines more from within.
Driven by that desire, I continued my search
and arrived at the 'classical gold background tempera technique'.
In this technique, no oil-based materials are used at all,
and I paint only with egg yolk medium and pigments.
The task of creating each color myself
was a series of confusions at first for someone like me who was used to squeezing paint from tubes.
However, the process of bringing colors to life from eggs and water
was somewhat primitive,
yet it was also a time to touch the pure prayer of 'wanting to leave a painting behind'
that has been passed down since the Middle Ages.
In the process of layering colors on the board,
I gradually began to feel
the quiet spirituality flowing there,
and a beauty akin to prayer.
For the gold background, I apply gold leaf after painting multiple layers of a base
made of red bole clay mixed with glue,
and then polish it carefully with an agate burnisher.
Each step of that process
seems to hold the prayers of icon painters
and the history accumulated by Renaissance painters,
making me feel naturally humbled.
The burnished gold leaf
shines quietly and surely, like the light of heaven.
It is not merely decoration,
but a sacred light
that makes one feel the presence of the invisible.
I feel that light
is the light of the soul.
Everyone carries light within them.
Yet, sometimes that light can become invisible.
That is why I
want to paint pictures that help us remember that light.
The gold background
is a symbol of that light.
Since then, my expression with gold leaf
has expanded through various changes,
such as combining it with Japanese paper (washi) and incorporating the 'sunago-zutsu' (gold dust tube) technique from Japanese painting.
Even so, what remains unchanged
is my desire to paint light.
If you can feel
that quiet light through my work,
there is nothing that would make me happier.
My work often uses a 'gold background'.
From those seeing it for the first time,
I am often asked,
'Why gold?'
But for me, this gold is
not decoration, but 'meaning' itself.
The gold background is a technique that was widely used in religious paintings before the Renaissance.
What was depicted there
was not the visible reality,
but the 'world of God' or 'eternity'.
In other words, gold
represents a 'light' that transcends this world.
The reason I continue to paint tempera paintings
also lies in this 'light'.
The classical technique of egg tempera
creates a transparent radiance that seems to glow from within
by layering thin coats of paint over and over.
By applying gold leaf to it,
a quiet, eternal light emerges
that is different from the light of reality.
It is not a light that asserts itself strongly.
It is a light that is infinitely quiet,
yet certainly exists.
Like something you feel in prayer,
something invisible but definitely there.
I feel that light
is the 'light of the soul'.
I believe that everyone
carries light within them.
However, in our daily lives,
we sometimes lose sight of that light.
That is why I
want to paint that light in my pictures.
The gold background
is a symbol of that light.
It is not something from a distant world,
but something that inherently exists within each of us.
If, through these works,
you are able to feel that light,
there is nothing that would make me happier.