《草食竜》By Tetsuya Ishida, 2003
Copyright (C)2007 石田徹也展實行委員會
Tetsuya Ishida was a Japanese painter, best known for his surrealism painting of an ordinary Japanese life. He conveys isolation, anxiety, identity crisis, skepticism, claustrophobia and solitude, uncured by these themes, by making schoolboys and businessmen as part of a factory and portraying young people. In addition, Tetsuya’s artworks usually use cool colors to process and bring out the loneliness and helpless feelings. No one knows the reason behind but I can only guess is that maybe his drawings are the reflection of the to-and-fro between life and dream. He is unable to throw of the pain and contradiction.
However, we can find that the style of “草食竜” is totally different with Tetsuya’s early works. As you can see, all colors used in the drawing belong to bright colors and you can also find that he used the sunlight to make the painting became more vibrant. It is the skill that you can never find in his early artworks. But the story behind is not shining the same.
According to the drawing, we can see that the boy who is representing him is the main character in the painting. He wear a blanket which analogy as the land and the robust trees and bright grass symbolize hope. Moreover, it seems that he was hesitating whether to eat those medicines on the floor or not. It implied that the boy got illness and according to Tetsuya’s biography he also got psychological problem for a long time. After you see the picture at the first sight and combined it will Tetsuya’s life, you may think that the picture is the reflection of the hope to recovery from pain and retake the hope for the future.
Nevertheless, in my opinion, the meaning of this drawing should be “Hope in the back I can’t see who can help” because he only burdens the dream in the back heavily which means he was dreaming the dream that cannot be touch and see. The painting was pretended that there is hope. But in fact, Tetsuya deeply believes that everything cannot be change and redeem anymore and painted this hopeless drawing.
Therefore, even though the painting used a lot of elements which representing hope, the message behind still not change. Tetsuya used his brush to voice the inescapable feelings. He accustomed to be alone and helpless so his self-portraits always are expressionless and numbness. The steading eyes seem to finding someone who can tell his dark feelings and give his some encouragements to carry on his own dream. That is why he draws down his loneliness, depressed, madness and mental pain constantly until the day that he gets the salvation.
