Kae Sasaki

Home: Winnipeg MB
Title: Post Office
Media: Oil and patina on gold-leafed panel
Dimensions: 91 x 122 cm

Artist Statement

This painting was is based on a century-old apothecary exhibit at Manitoba Museum, where this six-year-old child spent hours tirelessly pretend-playing. As the painting evolved, medicine jars were replaced with Japanese mineral pigments for painting, pharmaceutical utensils with literary books from my own formative years, it started to resist my cautious curation of her environment and revealed itself on its own; the combination locks on mailboxes began to resemble pill cases, books painted over bearing titles by Nabokov and Dante, all hinting her eventual puberty and adulthood.

Biography

Kae Sasaki obtained her first degree in German literature in Tokyo before moving to Winnipeg to complete BFA Honours at School of Art; she received Alice Hamilton Prize for excellence in painting, and has since established a studio practice. Her work has been shown in Winnipeg Art Gallery and Toronto International Art Fair.

Sasaki seeks an imaginative revitalisation of the narrative and atmospheric potential of painting. She uses the ability of painting to create visual worlds that are both familiar and extraordinary. Her process uses intuition as often as it does linear planning. As the psychological component takes over, symbols and other elements are added so that the painting will open up in a multi-vocal way.