ARTIST STATEMENT

My paintings are born from dialogue with people.

For many years, I have worked as a psychic, listening to the stories of over 40,000 individuals.
People come to me carrying deeply personal and urgent concerns love, family, work, illness, and major life decisions. Within these conversations emerge emotions that are inseparable from being human: anxiety, hope, hesitation, and determination.

I do not attempt to illustrate these stories.
I simply receive them.

Over time, these countless dialogues have accumulated within my body.
When I paint, I do not use a brush. Instead, I touch the canvas directly with my hands and fingers.

Through this physical contact, the emotions and tensions gathered from innumerable conversations begin to surface as movements and layers of color.

What appears on the canvas is not a person or a specific narrative.
What remains are traces of encounters traces of experiences born through dialogue with many individuals.

Those I have listened to remain anonymous.
Therefore, my work does not depict any specific individual.
Yet within the surface, fragments of many lives overlap anxieties, hopes, doubts, and decisions—emerging as abstract forms.

In this sense, my work is not an expression of personal emotion,
but rather a manifestation of experiences that arise within human relationships, appearing as an abstract pictorial field.

My paintings are created through the accumulation of countless dialogues.
Through the body, and through the act of touching the canvas, dialogue takes form as painting.

I call this approach:
“Embodied Dialogue Painting.”

Art Concept

This body of work is intended to engage human sensibilities through the structure of color and space, generating a site for inner psychological and emotional relief.

Critical Commentary

Hiroko Saigusa’s paintings originate from a fundamentally different point than conventional abstract art.
Their foundation lies in her long-standing practice as a psychic, engaging in dialogue with others.

Having encountered more than 40,000 individuals, her work has been rooted in deeply human experiences—love, family, work, illness, and life choices.
These dialogues are accumulated within the artist’s body and eventually emerge as physical movement within the act of painting.

Saigusa’s works do not depict specific people or narratives.
However, the canvas bears traces of emotions and tensions hope, uncertainty, and intensity absorbed through years of dialogue, appearing through gestures and flows of color.

In this respect, her paintings are not expressions of a personal inner world.
Rather, they can be understood as abstract manifestations of human experiences formed through dialogue.

While no figures are represented, multiple fragments of lives overlap within the surface.
Saegusa’s work can thus be read as an emotional landscape of society an accumulation of anonymous human experiences.