DAY SKY / NIGHT SKY
I started the sky series in 2008 after I completed my seed series. I had worked with the theme of "seed" for 10 years, a metaphorical expression of “life existence”. Then I began to focus on subjects like "egg", "cell" and “stars”. These subjects symbolize the theme of life force energy, propagation and continuation of life cycles.
In my images of the day sky, the stars are depicted very subtly, so faintly that the viewer needs to look closely to see them. In reality, the stars in the day sky are not visible in the daylight. But the stars exist all the time. The day stars are the existence of life that I see in the sky with my imagination, beyond the clouds and sunlight.
Our lives are just a small part of an enormous universe. If we look at the sky above us, we start to lose the sense of where we are standing now. Soon we are overwhelmed with the scale of the universe. When the dark comes, the boundless celestial obscurities may make us feel isolated, numb or even scared. The night sky reminds us of our tiny existence. The universe continues to change. No moment is the same. Just like our lives continue to change. Sparkling stars in the clear night skies were inspired from my lonely night train trip in the Alps over 20 years ago. The dramatic panorama of the night sky always lived inside myself as one of my most beautiful experiences.
My skies are not scientific star maps. They are the skies of my senses.
Creation is part of my life. It grows with myself. I draw the image on the stone and print the lithography, my artistic vocabulary. Again and again, I keep layering colors just like adding brush strokes on canvas, until the image grows and fuses into my soul.
Tomomi Ono
