Kamiyama

This painting came about through a residency in a silent mountain village on the island of shikoku in Japan. Once a thriving town of 60 thousand, has now diminished to 8000 due to a shift from farmwork to a technical industry and causing the younger generation to leave the mountains. There are four of six schools left empty, all modern builds, concrete and dillapidated in the near tropical climate. Ivy has claimed them, most domestic (traditional japanese architecture) builds lie empty. This building rose to meet me each morning on my way to my studio set in an old nursery with a slow and very un-punctual cuckoo clock. It kept catching my eye throughout my stay (which ended up being eighteen months long), until I finally relented and took the photograph with a stamp of my foot and a, 'there. are you happy now? You are on film', and drove on, forgetting all about it. It took seven years for me to dig out the picture which inspired the final painting. The tsunami there prompted my thoughts around Japan and I began looking through the snapshots I still had. This one leapt out at me again, and I decided I wanted to paint it.
Once the landscape had settled on canvas, I was surprised to notice the contrast, which must have been the thing catching my eye so prominently. That and the strange empty house standing proud, empty on a bridge, also mostly empty and rendered useless for another path which acts as a simpler and more useful route.
The changing landscape in that part of the world seems still puzzled, confused by the sudden lack of populus. There remains a silence which is like the breathing in of someone left suddenly alone and isolated.