art space co-jin

OSAMURA Yoshihiko

Born in Kyoto, 1968
Atelier Tomo
Yoshihiko likes colours, but can’t find what to draw. That made him realize that he can start drawing if he is given some form of pattern to begin with. Ever since this discovery, he started on creating pieces utilizing some templated rulers seven or eight years ago. He creates animals, plants, and geometric patterns, designing various shapes out of many rulers he owns. He sketches with coloured mechanical pencils, then colours it with a pencil of his own design that comes with a little pocket bin. You will see his repetitive iconography, beautiful and full of potential, which takes a half year to complete, and his passion for drawing is full of vibrant colours.

NAKAMURA Satomi

Born in Kyoto, 1958
Social Welfare Corporation NADUNA Gakuen
Satomi has been at NADUNA Gakuen for 48 years since she was 15 years old. She loves drawing more than anybody else at the Gakuen facility. She works on her production at a group home even during holiday periods.
At the facility, service users habitually draw seasonal flowers. The tradition started when their neighbor used to bring over some flowers picked from their garden. They were displayed beautifully, but they felt they could make it more useful, and then they decided to draw them. Her favourites are tulips, cherry, gerbera and Asian skunk-cabbage. She hesitantly said, “They bloom enthusiastically, that is why I like them”. The immaculately bloomed flowers you see in her drawings depicts their own strengths.

NISHITANI Fumitaka

Born in Kyoto, 1977
NPO Corporation SWING
Fumitaka has been a part of the NPO Corporation SWING since 2006. He began writing poems in 2007. His letters in his Japanese writing were well received, so he began to express his art using letters. As an extension of the way to express, he has started to draw with some Indian ink and he is also working on embroidery art pieces. When he begun to stitch, he was concerned about whether he could do it well enough, but as he got on with his work, he found that it went well and he tends to get into the groove of things when he listens to music that was played in the Showa era, including Anime songs. One of the titles of his works is “Nire no Hana”, (elm flower), which is a quote from one of those songs of the Showa period, titled “Koukou san nensei”, (3rd grade high school student). The flowers he depicted with his unique lines are fully bloomed, like they’re chorusing the famous song, melancholic yet with a positive tone.

MAMEMI

Born in Kyoto
NPO Corporation Kanon
She used to just sit still in front of her desk, but as she practiced how to communicate with others, she has become able to convey that she wants coloured pencils or a pencil sharpener. Drawing and cute things are her favourites. Putting her favourite mascot, “My Melody”, on her desk, she draws throughout her breaks. She finds some pretty flowers from a magazine on flower arrangements, and she conceptualizes it and begins to draw it with coloured pencils in a rhythmic fashion. Those popping colourways are a reflection of her talking, full of loveliness with the playful titles.

WATANABE Afuru

Born in Chiba, 1983
NPO Corporation SWING
He attended an art club when he was a junior high school student and he has been active since then through activities such as attending nude figure drawing classes. Since 2019, he has been a member of the NPO Corporation SWING, where he has worked on large pieces of works in a canvas size of size 100, along with some embroidery artworks. He has his ups and downs, but he has been producing his works with the support of people around him. There is no particular difference between his sketching of nude subjects and flowers. With both he starts to draw from the contours of petal or face. For him, drawing is easy peasy, but when it comes to embroidery, it takes time to complete, but he never gives up. His name, Afuru (literally meaning “overflowing” in Japanese), comes from a thought of being overflowed with happiness.