Traditional farmhouses amid wintry landscapes. Schoolchildren under brightly colored umbrellas cross snow-covered paddy fields. Footprints mark an otherwise pristine street scene after a snowfall. Then, as if to remind us that summer will soon be coming round again, a woman bearing a child on her back converses with a friend cutting watermelons for sale in front of an indigo-blue "noren" curtain.
Collectors and admirers of Sarah Brayer's work already know that her exhibition "Celebrating Washi" opened last night at the Kato Gallery in Hiroo, Tokyo. Many will have queued to snap up hitherto unseen artworks made from handmade paper. She has that kind of following -- and not only in Japan.
You can find her paper works and prints in collections as far afield as London's British Museum, the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum in the U.S., the American Embassy in Tokyo and Xerox Corp. in New York. An enormous body of work that represents 20 years of study and experimentation in all three countries.