Biography
“When drawing, I focus on each part of the landscape rather than the overall perspective. As I draw the colors that I noticed on the screen, the sections gradually overlap, and when they overlap, they disappear. The main motifs are plants and landscapes. Plants are drawn by looking at living things, and landscapes are drawn from photographs taken and stored. The landscape is gradually composed as I look at the motifs at different times and draw them.”
What are we always looking at while we are awake? The eyes catch the light of the outside world and always get some information. But consciousness is not always directed at the information that the eye captures. The mind is not always here now, sometimes it is in the past or future, and consciousness is far away. Saori Hasegawa seems to be looking at something in front of her, but she is not looking at it. Such phenomena are common in everyday life. They mean we are always overlooking something. When we are in a daydream, even if we have perhaps realized that something unconscious is in front of us, we cannot see it. And it’s a landscape we can’t see. Hasegawa calls such a landscape a “maigo no fuukei”, a lost landscape.
For the artist, there is a contradiction in the idea of visualizing a lost, or invisible landscape, but she is aware of its existence and of the possibility of exploring its essence through painting. She also hopes that the “maigo no fuukei” can work as an apparatus for daydreaming for the viewers. As she looks at it, her consciousness goes to another place, and eventually, it becomes a landscape in itself.
Works

Migonofuukei No. 144

Migonofuukei No. 148

Migonofuukei No. 145

Migonofuukei No. 149

Migonofuukei No. 146
