Mizuki Goto inspired Landscape
ART COMES FROM LIFE
NOT FROM THE STUDIO.
-Marina Abramovic
I am very excited to welcome the wonderful Krisanne from The Making Table to the blog. I am sure you will be delighted with her Mizuki Goto inspired landscapes. Her approach is truly wonderful and accessible for kids of all ages. I will let Krisanne take it from here..
My heart grew three sizes the first moment I saw Mizuki Goto’s work. A contemporary artist from Japan, Goto creates the most charming paper collages, paintings, and illustrations. Her pieces are full of whimsy with their exaggerated shapes and delicious candy colors: twin pelicans with tomato red bodies, a bright-eyed stocking-clad kitten, sherbet yellow lemons, and lacey paper teacups with a side of sugar cubes. As joyful as each of these works are, I keep returning to Goto’s landscapes. The patchwork pieces remind me of Gee’s Bend quilts and the mix of colors--mustard, light pink, peach, teal--feel as comforting, familiar and magical as childhood.
I wanted to explore the ideas of home with Goto’s landscapes as they evoke so many memories of places I have felt happiest. This paper landscape project is a way to visually express what home means to you.
Materials:
Paint brush and or brayer
Big sheets of sturdy white paper (I used 18 “ x 24” mixed media paper)
A heavy book or two
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The first step of this project is one of my favorites--go for a walk! Walk through your neighborhood, down to the park, onto the beach, into a forest, or even around your own backyard. Walk until you find an outdoor space that feels comforting and familiar. Take a mental picture of everything you see. Look closely at all of the different colors and shapes around you. You may see a pink and orange sky with oblong clouds, mountains that hover like creamy white pyramids, or a vast and rolling gray-green ocean.
Now go home and paint! Mix your tempera paints into candy colors that remind you of what you saw or felt on your walk. Because Goto’s landscapes are abstract and whimsical and we’re using her pieces as our guide, feel free to make some colors that you might not see in nature. You want to capture a feeling or a memory more than an exact replica of your chosen landscape. Once you have seven or eight paint colors that you really like, use those colors to paint your big sheets of paper--aim for one color per sheet.
Choose one of your painted papers as your canvas. This will be the background for your landscape. Use the remaining sheets of painted paper to cut out various shapes. Like Goto, you’ll want to keep your shapes fairly geometric--triangles, rectangles, and squares all work great. Don’t worry about making exact lines; their charm is in their imperfection! Once you have several shapes cut out, arrange some shapes onto your paper to get a sense of your landscape layout, and start gluing. This step of the project is really fun as it requires some problem solving. You want to cut out and glue on your shapes in such a way that they fit snugly together like puzzle pieces or a patchwork quilt. Feel free to add some details like telephone wires or a bird perching on a branch. I added a temple spire to one of my mountains because my home here in Utah is surrounded by mountains and Mormon temples!
Once you’ve got all of your shapes glued down, put a heavy book or two on top of your landscape for a few hours. Painted paper can be quite stiff, so it helps to put some weight on your collage to really flatten it out. After it’s been pressed, your Goto-inspired paper landscape is ready to be hung on your wall! I hope it reminds you, as it does me, how magical and meaningful home can be.
