“Painting is becoming for me a process of abstraction. It asks me to concentrate on the simplicity of materials and forms, to strive for the limitation of color and to practice the effort, always unsuccessful, to avoid the representation of a specific motif or image. To look at and celebrate the surfaces of the painting as if the eye were the hand that passes over them and feels as if it were touching the world just by looking at it.
The realization of the ten paintings that make up the Kyoto Suite has been parallel to the slow writing of my book Universe and Meaning. At the end of the book I maintain that the enjoyment and study of the cosmos lead to a “serenity of consciousness”. In these paintings I have worked with images of soft tones on the same light background color and lines, in general, horizontal. I wanted to convey serenity and harmony. The numerous shrines of Kyoto, with their characteristic Torii gates, introduce us to spaces of meditation under flat roofs.
In spring, the branches of the almond trees blossom horizontally and are reflected in the blue mirror of the lake.”