Study on shadows

When I was making this study, I wasn’t so much thinking about a sail as I was about how it could almost disappear into atmosphere. The greys and softened edges felt right — they gave me that tonal quality I was after, where things blur and drift instead of standing sharp. I wanted the painting to feel like something half-remembered, as if it might fade even while you look at it.

That’s where mono no aware comes in for me. I think beauty is often tied to fragility, to the awareness that what we see won’t last. The sail, to me, is less about boats or the sea and more about that fleeting presence — something here for a moment, then gone. It’s the kind of quiet that Tonalism allows, where mood and atmosphere say more than detail ever could.