KOMOREBI SERIES

My Komorebi series was never planned as a series.

The first painting was exhibited at Galley West Gallery in 2024 and became the first painting I ever sold. Encouraged by that experience, I painted another Komorebi the following year. It also found a home, and I continued returning to the subject. What began as a single painting gradually and naturally became an ongoing series.

Komorebi is a Japanese word describing sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees. The word has always carried a feeling of comfort for me. It brings back a memory from my younger years in Japan, biking with a good friend through a narrow stretch of pine trees on our way to the beach. I still remember the shifting light and shade along the path and the quiet pleasure of simply riding through it.

Perhaps that is why I continue to be drawn to cyclists moving beneath dappled light. Although the series grew partly because people responded warmly to the paintings, with each new work I have become more interested in the atmosphere itself—the movement of light, the rhythm of the trees, and the fleeting sense of being protected beneath them.

What started almost accidentally has become one of the most personal and recognizable threads in my work.

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