Rondo: Makiko Nakamura
'I was always looking up at the sky, or reading books about the universe and the limitless phenomena of space and time. It is like the repeating melodies of Saint-Saens or a Bach fugue, or the unreal worlds created by Samuel Beckett or Kenji Miyazawa, worlds which can only exist within the imagination'
Throughout her fourteen years in Ireland and ever since her return to Japan in 2013, Makiko Nakamura’s studio practice has remained constant. She refers to her canvases as her ‘slow paintings’, each one following the same steady process over several months: a single, repeating pattern or a block of colour left to dry before being overpainted with another and another, until she stops painting and begins to work her way back through the different layers with fine sandpaper. Her tightly controlled technique is like archaeology, she says. The emotional and artistic decisions of preceding months, once covered, reappearing as tantalising glimpses through the painting’s history.
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Makiko Nakamura, Evening Primrose, 2020
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Makiko Nakamura, Roses, 2021
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Makiko Nakamura, Faun, 2021
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Makiko Nakamura, The Ships from Pluto, 2021
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Makiko Nakamura, Galactic Railway, 2021
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Makiko Nakamura, 26. Mountains of Titan, 2021
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Makiko Nakamura, 5. On The Way Home, 2021
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Makiko Nakamura, 1. Spanish Beach, 2021