Arai Makoto

Arai Makoto is a painter from Japan.
He seeks to express the vastness and boundlessness of the eternal and unchanging life force.

He is influenced by VanGogh, Picasso, Jackson Pollock, de Kooning, Kazuo Shiraga, and others. And from the culture of his native Japan, he is strongly inspired by th...

Arai Makoto is a painter from Japan.
He seeks to express the vastness and boundlessness of the eternal and unchanging life force.

He is influenced by VanGogh, Picasso, Jackson Pollock, de Kooning, Kazuo Shiraga, and others. And from the culture of his native Japan, he is strongly inspired by the Azuchi-Momoyama culture around 1600, the eccentric painters of the Edo period such as Katsushika Hokusai and Soga Shohaku, and the Jomon culture that began 15,000 years ago.

He sees it as the beauty of a powerful, drastic, wild and broken tone, which is different from “wabi-sabi,”another energetic and wild Japanese cultural lineage he inherited.

As an approach to this, he believes it is most important to leave traces of action suchas drawing, scratching, heaping, and scraping using various tools, without assuming a finished form.


荒井真は日本出身の画家である。彼は広大無辺、永遠不変の生命力を表現しようとしている。ゴッホやピカソ、ジャクソン・ポロック、デ・クーニング、白髪一雄などに影響を受け、彼の母国である日本の文化からは1600年前後の安土桃山文化、江戸期の奇想の絵師である葛飾北斎や曾我蕭白、１万５千年前に始まった縄文文化に強い感銘を受ける。それは力強くドラスティックな野趣溢れる破調の美であると彼は捉え、「侘び寂び」とは違うもう一つのエネルギッシュで野性的な日本文化の系譜を引き継いでいる。そのためのアプローチとして完成形を想定せずに様々な道具を用いて描く、引っ掻く、盛り上げる、削り取る等のアクション行為の痕跡を残す事が最も重要だと考えている。