Lumi

Mizutani

Lumi Mizutani is a painter and lithographer born in Nagoya in Japan. She lives and works in Paris.

In Japan, Lumi has practiced the classical Japanese dance as seen in the Kabuki. In the 70s, Lumi moved to Paris and started to study body expression at the School of Mime with Etienne Decroux (one of Marcel Marceau’s teachers).

She later realized that painting is her real passion and she worked on lithography during 10 years. It is through the training with Japanese and Chinese masters that she got interested in and finally mastered the techniques of wash drawing and India ink.

Mesmerized by these techniques, she works on the alchemy between different elements she uses: paper, ink and water. Through the magic play of the materials, Lumi invites the viewer to enter the world of her artworks full of emotion. The artist wants the eye to follow the stroke. Lumi juggles with the codes by using traditional techniques, on the one hand, and permanently reinventing with her own techniques, on the other. She sometimes draws with an elastic dipped in the India ink. This technique gives more movement to her calligraphy paintings. Lumi Mizutani is inspired by the traditional Japanese landscapes. Her preparatory work consists in taking a large number of photos of the landscapes and then producing sketches after the photos.

"Mesmerized by the play between ink and water, by the conversation between black and white, I allow myself to be carried away, according to their whims, through this substance which floats, penetrates and then devours the paper. The contrasts of light ravish the eye, blown away by the magnetic power of zen aestheticism. The temptation to be led by this unknown force yields its pace to a fervent desire to conquer and better the material, thus the painter again becoming master of his creation." - Lumi Mizutani