Yuji Oki lives in a big house and paints increasingly large paintings -- by Japanese standards at least.
There is also a physical impression of size on first meeting, an illusion fueled to some extent by a broadness of visage, framed by a mass -- mess, he might say -- of artistically deranged hair.
He lives in a three-floor red-brick terrace house in Crouch End, an area of multicultural gentrification in North London. The front garden is planted in stone and gravel -- very "natsukashii"! The back is English: a stretch of brilliantly green lawn stretching serenely into the distance, with trees and a seat, and a sense of maturity.