Oil on canvas, 53x45cm, 2020.
Many of my paintings have a common motif in which a circular object, often the sun, moon, space or meteorological phenomenon is overlaid on the face/head of the central figure. In some of my paintings there are nebulas that overlay faces, and in this one I chose the map of a hurricane to overlay on the face.
I painted "Hurricane" in the late summer of 2020, and it is more or less a record of what I was doing and thinking during that time. A hurricane/typhoon had just hit Japan, which is where I got the hurricane image from, and because of the summer heat I had been drinking a lot of lemon tea, strawberry milk, and Pocari Sweat, which I painted into the background. At the time, I had also just finished reading Uzumaki by Junji Ito, and was inspired by the chapter where the eye of a hurricane follows the main character around her town. Overall, this painting is a collection of images and ideas from a specific period of time in my life, based around the theme of summer hurricanes.
