現代美術作家　玉本奈々

I know this is a very rudimentary question, but why do painters paint to begin with?
I sometimes find myself wondering why for no particular reason
To express something, or to seek another masterpiece?
Or simply because they are painters.
I often wonder, but there seems to be no answer to my question, and then I stop wondering and always try to convince myself as if I found a satisfactory answer.

Paintings whose touch is just too flat, too light, too gentle, and too nice.
Such paintings can be seen everywhere now.
Some people might consider them modern, I wonder.
Looking at them, I feel nothing except that they somehow lack strength and leave something to be desired.
Or is it just me who feels this way?
And again, I start to wonder why painters paint or whether they have any necessity of painting.

I feel that it is Nana Tamamoto who has shown me one of the possible answers to this vague question of mine.
For Tamamoto, to paint is to live.
She must paint because that’s how she maintains the balance between her body and her spirit.
Should she stop painting, Tamamoto must stop living and soon become as if she were dead.

Heavy colors and forms.
Ugliness and passion.
It is the world of almost madness that defines her collection.
She cries out from the bottom of her soul, and I presume such cry itself takes its form as an artwork. I would say there are few painters who reveal themselves with such intense passion and no hesitation, except for Tamamoto.
No one can tell how her energy will show itself in the future, but I do hope her work will raise the revolution in the current peace-addicted world of paintings.

Masaki YANAGIHARA
Director of the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto