Yoshio Ikezaki is a Japanese artist and papermaker born in Kitakyushu City in 1953.  He then went on to receive a Bachelor of Art and Master of Fine Arts from Florida State University in painting before moving back to Japan to study traditional Japanese papermaking. For six years, Ikezaki studied and experimented with traditional Japanese papermaking under master papermakers, Shigemi and Shigeyuki Matsuo. He would later employ what he had learned to produce his own paper for his paintings and sculptures, giving him complete control over the paper’s thickness and fiber distribution; this allowed him to take into account the Sumi-ink’s reactions to varying fiber ratios while manufacturing paper for his paintings.

Ikezaki’s Sumi-ink paintings are deeply associated with his childhood memories of the  Kitakyushu Island landscapes he saw. He sees and paints these landscapes as “slow-moving photographs” where it displays all the natural elements of the landscape to his audience. Ikezaki’s art has a mysterious and evocative quality that stems from his use of his own Sumi-ink, which gives his work movement and vitality and moves viewers as they look around it.

Ikezaki’s work utilizes Ma which is defined to be a “Japanese aesthetic term to designate an artificially placed interval in time and space which include meaningful voids created by the deliberate use of blank space.” This balance and use of positive and negative space is an essential, prevalent theme throughout his paintings and sculptures.

The Green Wonderland

Sumi-ink and Japanese watercolor on paper, 30 x 40 inches, 2018

The Winter Wonderland

Sumi-ink and Japanese watercolor on paper, 30 x 40 inches, 2018