Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

I reached artistic maturity between Japan and Ireland, and my work grows from that in-between space, where tenderness meets estrangement, and humor brushes against melancholy. As a child, manga taught me the power of line and narrative economy; later, painting offered me a slower, more contemplative way to let stories unfold. On the canvas, time stretches. Characters hesitate. Silence becomes visible.

Through my alter ego, Usatchi the bunny, I explore vulnerability, doubt, and quiet perseverance. Usatchi drifts through sparse, psychological landscapes that feel at once intimate and unmoored, carrying fragments of memory and longing. What may appear playful often conceals a deeper meditation on solitude and belonging.

My years in Kyoto renewed my connection to Japanese aesthetics, the balance of emptiness and form, the sensitivity to season, the dignity of restraint. These principles guide my compositions and my search for clarity.

I am a painter who will spend the rest of my life in the pursuit of meaning and beauty like the Japanese masters before me.

While At Headlands

While at Headlands, I plan to develop a new paintings and works on paper featuring my alter ego, Usatchi, responding to the layered histories and shifting atmospheres of the Marin Headlands and the greater San Francisco Bay. I am interested in the tension between idyll and defense embedded in the site —its former military structures set against vast ocean views— and how this duality echoes vulnerability and resilience. Maintaining a studio at the Headlands will give me space to let these impressions accumulate slowly, allowing Usatchi to wander through new psychological and historical landscapes, balancing humor with quiet unease.