Towa Takaya describes herself as an artist, “I am a doer, not a painter,” and says that she is conscious of “creating a space of ‘appearance’ rather than generating meaning” in the act of doing so. I deeply sympathize with her words. Because I recognize that her act has transcended the act of painting and has been sublimated into an act of generating the energy of the wheel of life and death on the screen. Takaya’s paintings are like clouds in the sky, constantly changing, seemingly without boundaries, beginning or end, despite the fact that they are contained within a canvas. Those who immerse themselves in the world of Takaya's works will find various visions that are difficult to describe, and they will sense an eternity that transcends time and space.

Takaya has also been engaged since 2016 in a production practice of “not drawing lines” to avoid having the image generate meaning. Somewhere along the way, she says, she began to abandon her consciousness of “painting” and her ego and dive into the realm of the unconscious, even while moving her paintbrush toward the canvas. As her brush dances in this state of altered consciousness, a dance of colors is created on the canvas. As soon as she awakens from this dance of unconsciousness, a work of art appears. Takaya travels through the psychic energy that moves between personal memory, the collective unconscious, and the realm behind it. She then records it, she says. Towa Takaya is a dancer who dances with a paintbrush and is also a mediator.

Physics research has shown that the smallest substance, the atom, which makes up everything around us, is nearly hollow. In the Buddhist scripture the Heart Sūtra, the word shiki-soku-ze-ku is used to express the idea that everything in the world is śūnyatā (meaning: emptiness). However, this śūnyatā, which Takaya calls “the abyss of　existence,” must be filled with an infinite amount of psychic energy. In other words, what Takaya depicts is śūnyatā, which is a copy of this unconscious world. I want to believe that Takaya’s works will function as a “device” to make mankind aware of the richness of such a śūnyatā realm. 

Towa Takaya confronts the future with the oldest and strongest tools, “mind” and “body.”

Hirotaka Fujita: Editor-in chief of ONBEAT