HRD FINE ART

Introduction

HRD Fine Art is pleased to announce a group exhibition titled “True Colors” from April 12 through May 31, 2025, highlighting abstract paintings of four female artists who focus on painterly expression characterized by the use of rich, vibrant colors. Three artists, Midori Terashima, Miho Tsujimoto, and Yuna Oka, are from Japan, and one artist, Chloe Chai, is from Singapore.

Color is and has been an important element in painting, especially in a sense that colors are often liked with expression of emotions or depiction of space. Terms like “colorist” and “chromatic painting” also point to the significance of colors in painting.

From "Impressionist" painters of 19th century who strived to depict the light using bright colors, to "color field painting" of mid-20th century that put vast, solid colored areas to the center stage of abstract expressionism movement, and to "op art" that combined colors and geometric forms to create optical illusions, color has been, in various ways, essential to the evolution of modern painting, and still is extensively explored by contemporary painters around the globe.

This exhibition displays artworks of four painters who primarily work with rich, vibrant colors, presenting the viewer with an opportunity to examine such colorful topics as semantics and symbolism, regional colors, theory of colors, and emotional expressions.

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This exhibition will be on view at the same time as Toshiyuki Nanjo's solo exhibition "Hakusha-Seisho: Wihte Sands, Green Pines."

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Artists' Statement

In my journey through art, every canvas is a page of my diary, a reflection of my inner world. It’s not just about the aesthetics; it's about the story each piece tells, the emotions it evokes. My art is my voice, my medium of touching lives, and sharing perspectives.

- Chloe Chai

I have always been expressing my own thoughts through colors. Colors can be very personal, and they function differently depending on each person's memories of life. For this exhibition, I focused on gestures of applying colors, as they are essential in color expressions.

- Midori Terashima

For me, painting is a series of act of following my own instinctive joy, of continuously asking myself: "Would it feel good if I put this color here or this line here?" The shapes of free-form, non-geometric canvases, which I often use recently, are also based on my spontaneous drawings on paper or cloth.

I just let myself go with the forms and spaces that result from the accumulation of my act of applying colors and drawing lines.

- Miho Tsujimoto

The theme of my creation is the very act of "drawing." Facing up to a piece of canvas, I repeat instantaneous act of drawing without caring about before or after, and the accumulated result of such actions becomes my painting. I don't know what part of that accumulation will be scooped up by the viewer: color, form, word, or meaning? But regardless of the viewer's response, or even the lack of it, I think and speak out through my act of drawing.

- Yuna Oka