I formally began this artistic journey during the fall of 2025, when I traveled to Rome for a year to study historic architecture and urbanism. I soon found analytic drawing and documentation alone wasn’t enough to capture the emotional impact of the places I saw.

I began to paint en plein air to capture the spirit and life of a space or subject. To paint one time over, with a chance to authentically capture a moment from the eye, learning to submit to the physics of water and its transparency.

Painting on site within the environment requires decisions made on intuition. Limiting hesitation and painting freely became the best way to reveal the perceived presence of a subject.

To practice giving space to your full attention and noticing what interests you about the world around us.

— 和也