Hiroshi Hayakawa . Japanese Fine Painter

I was always intrigued by the 17th century Dutch still-life tradition, “Vanitas” and its symbolism as a cautionary tale of the transitory nature of beauty and pleasure in life. This drawing Vanitas 18 is from my current project I started back in 2014. The drawings in this series are my attempt to marry the Vanitas art and my interest in exploration of figurative art to express my interpretation of the theme by using the symbolism as a common language. Although this project started as a response to some of the unfortunate events that took place in my personal life, the driving force of these pieces was one of the questions that runs through all of my artistic expressions from the beginning: how to capture ever-changing and eluding beauty that exudes a sense of mystery before it disappears. I feel the awareness of this fragility and brevity of what we find beautiful gives us the more heightened perception of our ephemeral existence and makes the experience of beauty even more poignant.

Issue 54 April 2022