Circus | Oil on linen, 18" x 24"
Shadow Field | Oil on canvas, 16" x 20"
home while her husband, an architect with whom she occasionally does projects like public art, is in town. “So, I need to deal with my environment,” she says. “When your life is in a difficult place for many reasons, you have to deal with it right? My painting is a really good tool for me to deal with those life issues.” For Dairiki, those issues over the years have included “living in a different culture, living in a new environment or having a new family.” “I raised my stepdaughter, for example. Now she is 24 and is fine but when she was a teenager it wasn’t that easy,” Dairiki laughs. “Painting is a really great tool to see myself, to detach and see what’s really going on. The process of painting—mixing paints, grabbing brushes—is very healing for me. It helps me face difficulties visually. Sometimes you have nightmares, but expressing those
things and having deep commitment to my painting was great for my life.” Prior to her permanent move, Dairiki had come to the United States in the late 1970s, around age 20, as a struggling artist with her struggling photographer boyfriend, both trying to make it in Los Angeles and New York. “He did really cool photography but it was just two young people trying to be artists, and it was tough,” she recalls. “I had a lot of dreams and it was good, but we stayed less than two years.” Dairiki came back to the United States from Japan in 1994, hoping to see more of the country. She moved to San Francisco and worked at a ceramics studio in Haight Ashbury, and was inspired by her new city surroundings. Her art, she says, changes given what’s going on in her life and where she is, but it stays the same in the sense that it is always what she dreams in that time and space.
Moon Drops | Oil on linen, 30" x 40"
“When I was in San Francisco I was not doing rural or nature,” she notes. “It’s a big city with interesting people and so my art was different. But I always painted the dream world, even [when I lived] in Japan.” Lately, she is trying more abstract painting, taking her dreams to another level. But, she adds, her real life still offers plenty of inspiration. One of the most romantic, touching pieces of the Pence exhibit is Moon Night Walk. I had to ask—was that real or dream? Who is in the painting? “My husband and I take a walk, not
every night, but often after dinner, and our neighbor has a walnut orchard we walk by,” she explains shyly. “Sometimes we just enjoy the beautiful full moon and talk about the day. That’s my real experience.” Dairiki spoke with Submerge the night her exhibit opened. She held an artist talk at Pence Gallery Jan. 17. She says she enjoys talking to people who see her work. “Different people see things in different ways,” she says. “Sometimes people see things I don’t see in my paintings. I want to enjoy that new image in my painting too!”
Take a glimpse into Sayako Dairiki’s dream world through her exhibition Inner Landscapes at Pence Gallery, located at 212 D Street in downtown Davis, through Feb. 27. Find out more at Pencegallery.org.
“The process of painting—mixing paints, grabbing brushes—is very healing for me. It helps me face difficulties visually. Sometimes you have nightmares, but expressing those things and having deep commitment to my painting was great for my life.” – Artist Sayako Dairiki Egg | Westhampton Park, Sacramento
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