(Japan 1948– )
89.5 x 59.5cm image; 112.0 x 74.0cm sheet
Imamura's multi-media, sensitive abstract prints are testaments to the luxuriant pleasures of grey, and to the whims of chance, since his surfaces are enhanced by the vagaries of printing over which he has no control. The artist is sensitive to the conflicts of everyday life and the efforts to harmonise mind and body against the triple pressures of the environment, routine and time. As a sort of panacea, he recalls in this print the reverence he felt for nature when as a child he walked through the grounds of the shrine in the forest and felt the wind against his body. His print has the stature of a non-iconic homage to animism, the spirit dwelling within all natural phenomena, that was a central tenet of Japan's native religion of Shintoism.
Imamura still lives in Nagano Prefecture where he was born.
Jackie Menzies, Contemporary Japanese Prints: The Urban Bonsai, 1992, pg. 33.
Jackie Menzies, Contemporary Japanese Prints : The Urban Bonsai 1992, Sydney, 1992, 33, 43 (colour illus.). cat.no. 19
The Urban Bonsai: