Some eight years, when Chieko Oshie was a student at the Kyoto City University of Art, she went out walking on the grounds and chanced upon a wild burdock plant in bloom. It was something in the colors that caught her eye, and the plant became a favorite of the young student's fancy. When autumn came and the hues began to change, Oshie's interest was piqued. She began to draw and paint pictures of burdock. She hasn't stopped since.
Ten of her new paintings make up "Bloom," the latest exhibition from the 30-year-old Osaka artist. The botanical panels (Oshie also paints other plants, particularly rape flowers and chrysanthemums) are complemented by a half-dozen watercolors and pencil-on-paper drawings in the show, which is now on at the Nishimura Gallery on Tokyo's Ginza strip.
This is Oshie's fifth show in just over three years at the prestigious gallery, and she is a favorite there due largely to the spiritual life she finds in her flowering subjects, a vitality she communicates very well to the canvas. Her paintings are large but light, the paint is thinly applied, and in some places hardly there at all, like the wisp of a flower's fragrance on a spring afternoon. Oshie has a wonderful ability to bring the essence of her subjects out from the inside, such that her pictures look almost translucent.