Chiaki Ishimatsu, an artist living in Toyohashi City, depicts girls who are expressionless, but somehow addictive and have a certain loveliness. Ms. Ishimatsu expresses the importance of aesthetic diversity in Japanese society by drawing women who are generally not considered beautiful.

In 2017, she started full-scale artist activities, and in 2019, she was selected for the “New Art Award Debut 2019” sponsored by the historical art magazine “Gekkan Bijutsu”.

After that, she won nine awards in two years, such as "10th Adachi UKIYOE Grand Prize 10th Commemorative Special Prize" and "Peters Gallery Competition 2019 Grand Prize (Mineko Ueda Award / Tomoko Fujita Award)". She is a highly acclaimed emerging painter.

Inspired by painting

Exhibition at Nagoya Mitsukoshi

Yey

Go on fire

Chiaki Ishimatsu was born in 1994 in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan. In 2012, she entered the Faculty of Law at Seikei University, where she aspired to take the bar exam, but decided to become an illustrator. In 2017, she began her full-fledged artist career, working as a painter of unattractive women.

This time, Life Designs Editorial Team visited "Nagoya Mitsukoshi" to meet Ms. Ishimatsu. The first solo exhibition in Nagoya was held at the art gallery.

− Please tell us what made you want to become a painter in the first place.

Ishimatsu: "I've always liked drawing, but I chose to study law at university with the aim of becoming a public prosecutor. However, as I studied for the bar exam, I gradually lost my mental balance. At that time, painting, which I loved, cheered me up, and as I continued to paint, I gradually began to think that I wanted to pursue a career in painting.

I didn't graduate from art college, so I'm basically self-taught. At one point, I worked as an illustrator at a design company, but in 2017 I started working full-scale. ”

I want to make the world a kinder place

Not cute

-Please tell us about the theme of your work, and how you started to draw Fubijin-ga (picture of unatrauctive women).

Ishimatsu: “I have always had a strong interest in masochism. I am attracted to poor people, and I like things that are beautiful and poisonous. I use masochism as a major theme in my paintings.

The reason why I started painting pictures of un-beautiful women is because I wanted to make the world a kinder place. One day, I was told by some boys in high school age that I was not pretty, and I was very hurt by that comment, and it made me feel a lot of pain, but at the same time, I wondered what it means to be beautiful.

Ishimatsu: "This world is not just made up of beautiful and ugly people. I felt that the standard of 'beauty' in society was very narrow. There are many beautiful things in the world that we don't know about, but there are many things that we pass by without noticing them.

That is why I wanted to find a sparkle by depicting "un-beautiful" paintings that are neither beautiful inside nor outside, things that the world does not approve of, things that exist in reality, but are excluded from the world of beauty. Through my work, I hope to change the world's consciousness, if only a little.