Kaé Sato is a Japanese Style Painting Artist, currently lives and works in Inwood, Manhattan, NY. She was born and rose in a suburban area of Tokyo where still many natural habitat remained. As a daughter of a renowned sculptor in Japan, she was naturally befriended with many art forms since her early childhood. She studied the style of the traditional technique of Japanese Style Painting in a famous art college in Tokyo, Musashino Art University which has originally founded in 1929 and graduated with BFA from the college.
Soon after started as her artist career, she realized the fundamental beauty in many architectural composition and normally unnoticeable memories behind of those histories, and has started expressing them in her paintings. Then she connects the originality of the architectural structure with the physical strength of the natural composition which all of the natural livings contains themselves. She also focuses into the memories which she believes all of the existences in this universe have it in themselves.
Her artworks have been shown in Japan, USA, Italy and other countries in numerous exhibitions.
I believe that there is "something" in everything in this world which cannot be recognized merely by seeing them, and that within that “something”, some element, which can also be called "memory" remains. That memory is also made up of history which inhabits in things, and I suppose, it is created from the history that remains on the air, land, creatures, plants, and the earth. Because of that memory, there is a continuous present of time. When I paint, sometimes I feel something other than feelings with five senses. I feel that "that memory" is embedded in my memory. Sounds are heard in memory, melodies flow, I feel like a rhythm that echoes all five senses. Materially there is no sound or resonance within a painting, however, while I create my artwork, I am conscious of how to express something like that rhythm as a painting. Express the "atmosphere" in two dimensions; capture the past, the present, and the memory there; also explore the visible natural phenomena and things behind that phenomenon; I want to make them into my artworks. On the artworks series of insects which I am currently working on, I believe that the history which cannot be seen visually, is embedded in the form of insects and other every single thing in the nature of their habitat, as various forms of memories, and that the memory and its existence can be captured from shapes, patterns, and movements of the insects. The existence of those small insects has a very long history. It brings up the strength of living, and the memory of the history that exists there for us. Insects and butterflies, which I currently am working on, feeling that way, and the natural world that surrounds them, are the themes that attract me. And for me, what makes it possible are the pigments of Japanese style painting which derived from minerals which inherent the history from the birth of the universe, and the Japanese Inks and brushes that have a capability to deliver delicate expressions.
私は、この世界のすべてのものには、単に視覚だけでは捉えられない『なにか』が存在し、その存在の中に『記憶』とも呼べるものが残っているのではないかと考えています。 それは、ものに宿る歴史からなる記憶でもあり、空気、土地、生物や植物、地球に残る歴史から生まれてくるものなのではないかと考えます。 その記憶があるからこそ、つづいている現在がある。 絵を描いていると、五感で感じる以外のなにかを感じる時があります。私の記憶の中に「その記憶」が埋め込まれてくる感じがします。記憶の中に音が聞こえ、旋律が流れ、五感すべてに響くリズムの様なものを私は感じます。 物質的に絵画には音や響きはないけれど、そのリズムの様なものを貌ある絵画としてどのように表現するかを意識して制作しています。 「そこに存在する空気」を二次元に表現し、過去、現在、そこにある記憶を捉え、目に見える自然現象とその現象の背後にあるものをも探求し、作品にしたい。 今私が取り組んでいる虫のシリーズも、虫たちやその生きる自然界にあるひとつひとつのものの形の中にも、視覚的には見えない歴史が様々な記憶として埋め込まれ、その記憶と存在は、形や文様、動きの中からも捉えられると考えています。 小さな虫の存在は、とても長い歴史を持ち、その生きる力強さと、そしてそこに存在する歴史の記憶を私たちに呼び起こさせてくれる。そう感じて取り組んでいる虫や蝶と、それを取り巻く自然界は私にとって魅力ある、ひとつのテーマです。 そしてそれを可能にするものが、自分には宇宙の誕生からの歴史を内在する鉱物由来の日本画の材料であり、繊細な表現のできる墨と日本の筆なのです。