I have been looking forward to posting Takashi’s sketchbook pages this week and saw that some other bloggers had Takashi’s work on their mind. The other day, while guestblogging on design*sponge, I was so excited to see perfectbound wrote all about Takashi’s work with tons of photos of his works too. I am so in love with Takashi’s embroidery pieces and paintings. I think they are incredible with such interesting colorful shapes. Takashi is originally from Japan but moved to Winnipeg, Canada about five years ago. Here’s what he told me in his email-”I think life is too short to take gravely all the time. I want to delight in what I can when I can. Having this as my essential philosophy, my goal of art making is to create a positive and playful atmosphere through my work. I hope that the people who see my work feel that.” I definitely feel that. Takashi’s work makes me think of imaginary happy lands where I could only get there by floating. In his sketchbooks we can see where his happy compositions all begin. Takashi says “On contrary to my colorful paintings and embroidery pieces, my sketchbook is usually very colorless because it is for me to mainly decide the composition and themes for the final works. The coloring is saved for my enjoyment on canvas or with thread later on. The numbers you can find in some pages are the dates that the sketches are done and some simple calculation of the ratio for my final works in relation to the sketchbook ratio. I sometimes add my diary too.” Thanks Takashi for sharing these. You can see more of Takashi’s work on his site here. And check out his recent group show at Le gallery right here.

© Julia Rothman 2007