Misuzu Oyama: Drawing Like Writing

Since I was a child, I often asked people questions. I felt like I understood the answers, yet at the same time, I felt like I didn't.

When I draw, I move forward by repeating questions and answers to myself.

As I keep asking "Why?", the number of "Whys" increases for every word that makes up a sentence. This is because words have different ranges of meaning and redundancies depending on the person using them and the situation. The more I ask, the more unknowns emerge within the answers; I can never fully grasp everything. Lately, I feel that I am drawing as if searching for my own form from the areas blurred by that redundancy.

It is a process like quieting the loud sound of spilled water and returning it to myself.

In conversation, words move in one direction. In written text, you are free from the timeline to some extent, but I still feel the direction of progress is fixed.

"Since I was a child, I often asked people questions." This is a "sentence written previously."

In writing, the same word located in different positions becomes something else. In drawing, even if I follow associations while ignoring the direction of progress, I can arrange them almost simultaneously, and I can place things in shifted positions as if they are connected. Writing and drawing have different kinds of fluctuations, and I feel a sense of familiarity with both. Or rather, I feel as if my own room exists there.

There are infinite gaps where one can ask "Why?", and the world I see changes every time I change the question.

I am sometimes asked where I start when I draw. In my case, I first write a simple plot of a story in words, and then I proceed by arranging that content along with branched-off side stories.

Therefore, when I tried to write about drawing, I ended up writing about writing, and after repeating "Why?" to myself, this text was created.