Wandering painter "Kiyoshi Yamashita"

There is a painter, Kiyoshi Yamashita, who I have always thought was unbeatable.

I saw this as a sample of collage in my elementary school textbook, and I wondered what it was and whether it was good or bad.

The teacher told me that these were drawings by students with intellectual disabilities, and I wondered if they could only be made by students with disabilities.

Later, when I grew up, I had the opportunity to see an exhibition and saw the actual pieces, which were even more intricately crafted than I had heard.I can only describe them as amazing, especially the railroad tracks and fireworks, which were made by layering thin strips like paper straw one by one.

When I look at a painting, I always try to imagine the process the artist went through to create it, but just imagining this process is difficult.

Also, influenced by TV, he travels around the country as a tramp or beggar, and I feel envious of the way he interacts with the local people by painting his favorite pictures and collages in each place (though I can't be a tramp or beggar, of course).

The real Yamashita himself was apparently quite unsociable, simple, and taciturn, not the charming person he appears to be on TV. However, he seems to have had the intelligence of a young elementary school student, and he probably always retained the sensibilities of a child.

Reading his published "Wandering Diary," one can see that he had lived a very difficult life during that time. He was also full of curiosity, and he must have held on to things that he had forgotten as an adult.

Sometimes the pages where he gets flustered by questions to people make me laugh. There is also the leisurely Showa era.

Yamashita Kiyoshi did not sketch on location, but rather created his works after returning home with an incredible memory of what he saw during his two to three years of wandering.

I travel to see unusual things, but this was amazing when I didn't have a smartphone or a camera. It seems that he worked on one collage at a fixed time every day for about 20 days, from morning to evening.

He was a very meticulous person. "It's not something that can be completed in just two or three days like in the TV dramas."

My paintings are now mostly watercolors, but I guess this is because it suits my impatient personality, which I've always had. I'm not good at the leisurely, time-consuming nature of oil painting.

Before starting to paint, he draws a rough sketch, and once it is roughly completed, he starts painting in one go, completing five or six paintings.

The important thing is to express what you saw, felt, and experienced at the places you visited yourself. This is on a different level of impact than photos you picked up from the internet.

Nowadays, we can take pictures and videos and watch them over and over again, but I think it's especially great that videos allow you to hear the voices of the people who are moved and feel the atmosphere of the moment.