ON RECENT TRIPS to Japan I made a number of visits to Suehirotei, a theatre in Tokyo, to see performances of rakugo, the Japanese art of storytelling. Although I struggled with the language I became fascinated by the energy, pace and rhythm of the performers. I tried to capture this in a series of rapid pencil drawings.
On returning the UK I enlarged these sketches and turned them into paper cuttings using the same techniques I explored in my masked portraits of 2021. My aim was to use complex, scissor-cut edges to reflect the vibrational energy of the original performance.
Available to collectors either loose (wrapped in tissue and supplied in an A4 cachet portfolio, together with a certificate of authenticity) or mounted on glass in a limed-oak frame, with a signed white sheet behind the paper cutting and the certificate glued to the back.
