井堂雅夫は岩手の大自然の中で幼少期を過ごしました。京都に移り住み画家となった後も自身の心のふるさととして、いつかは岩手に戻りたいと思う気持ちを持ち続けていました。そんな時、岩手県花巻市のために仕事をする機会があり、それが縁で岩手県花巻市にアトリエを構えることになりました。周りを田んぼに囲まれた100年前の藁葺きの農家をアトリエとし、京都と行き来する生活が続きました。
四季折々に移り変わる周辺の風景の中でも5月は命の息吹が一斉に爆発するように桜や梅、桃、菜の花、レンゲが次々と花開き、その中を蝶や虫が忙しそうに飛び回る光景が展開し、やがて田に水が入ります。秋になると辺りの田んぼは日に日に緑色から黄色い絨毯を敷き詰めた景色に変わり生命のドラマはフィナーレを迎え冬となります。
井堂雅夫は「四季の中でも一番好きな季節は冬だ」と話していました。「様々な生命の営みが止まったかのように見える中でも、土の下では次の命の準備が進んでいる。あらゆる時代あらゆる場所であらゆる生命が命のバトンタッチを繰り返している。そのエネルギーは宇宙の意思によってもたらされる。それは私の命も同様であり、私が生かされているのは絵を描くことにより日本の素晴らしい文化を次世代に繋げていくこと」と語っていました。
「雪渡り」は花巻のアトリエから見た風景から発想を得た作品です。降り積もった雪が何もかもを覆った大地に鈍い太陽の光が射し、雪原には子供の頃から見慣れた岩手山を背景に、裸木の枝が美しいシルエットを映しだしています。その木に羽根を休めようと雪の空を低く飛ぶ鳥そして白馬が描かれ、現実と夢想の合間に心を遊ばせて描いている井堂雅夫が見えるような作品です。
Blog post December 2020
"Yukiwatari"(Snow Crossing)
Masao Ido spent his childhood surrounded by nature in Iwate. Even after he moved to Kyoto and became a painter, he still continued to have feelings that he would someday return to Iwate, which was his hometown in his heart. At that time, he had an opportunity to work for Hanamaki city, Iwate Prefecture. Thanks to that, he was able to build a studio of his own there. He used a 100-year-old farmhouse with straw-thatched-roofs surrounded by paddy fields as his studio and spend his life traveling back and forth between Iwate and Kyoto.
With the surrounding landscape changing through all seasons, especially on May, flowers such as cherry blossoms, plums, peaches, rape blossoms, and lotus bloom one after another as if the breath of lives is exploding all at once, and it is followed by scenes of butterflies and insects busily flying around. Water eventually flows into the paddy fields. In autumn, the scenery would change resembling a carpet as the color of paddy fields turning from green to yellow, and finally the drama of life reaches its end as winter comes by.
Masao Ido said, "Winter is my favorite of the four seasons." "Even though it seems that all the lives have stopped, they are all preparing for a new life under the ground. Each life from every generation repeatedly passes the baton of life to another everywhere. It is the will of the universe that brings forth that energy. We can say the same thing with our lives. Through that same energy of life, I am able to draw and transfer Japan's wonderful culture to the next generation", as he continued.
Yukiwatari is a work of art inspired by the scenery Masao Ido saw from his studio in Hanamaki. The dull sunlight shines on the ground covered with snow, and the branches of bare trees project a beautiful silhouette on the snowy field, with the background of Mt. Iwate, which has been familiar to him since childhood. There are also a white horse and a bird flying low in the snow-white sky as if it was resting on a tree. This is a great work of art in which we can see Masao Ido paints with playful mind, flying between reality and dreams.
木版画 雪渡り https://gado.onlinestores.jp/category/select/cid/356/pid/9022
ギャラリー雅堂
〒603-8365
京都市北区平野宮敷町27
TEL：075-464-1655
FAX：075-464-0747
E-MAIL:mokuhanga@gado.jp
WEB: http://www.gado.jp/
