Prominent Japanese etcher Tadayoshi Nakabayashi has won many major print prizes in China, Korea and Japan. Nakabayashi was born in Tokyo in 1937 and studied at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Museum, where he taught printmaking for some 40 years. Nakabayashi has said:

On my return to Japan after a 12-month study tour of Europe and America, the nature I encountered in my home country was truly beautiful. Not that I felt it was merely pretty to look at, but I was deeply moved by the feeling of co-existence, the perfect wholeness which Man and Nature create as they complement each other. From that moment on, I rejected completely any subjective and excessive self-consciousness that had been present in my work and, by the actual injection of Nature, my work moved towards the expression of my own identification with Nature. 'Position Series' and 'Transposition Series' are evidence of this new direction. On reflection — perhaps in reaction to the rootless, drifting sense one has when travelling — this new direction was a manifestation of my desire to plant my roots firmly into the ground once more. Through etching and printing the copper plate, I had to compensate for this feeling of absence from my land and confirm my own existence.

In the beginning I believed these series were just part of a temporary phase, and that I would probably revert to my old subjective approach. However, 13 years later, I still do not feel that I have been able to fill in that feeling of absence.¹

Endnote:

1. Nakabayashi, Tadayoshi, artist's statement in Japanese Ways, Western Means: Art of the 1980s in Japan [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, p.40.